News of the Arroyo


Title:

Upgrades for arroyo habitats

Subtitle:

Date:

2008-01-13

Summary:

January 13, 2008 - Editor Larry Wilson announces the groundbreaking ceremony for the Central Arroyo Seco Restoraton Project.

Author:

Larry Wilson

Publication:

Pasadena Star-News

Content:

I was just riffing the other day when I wrote, apropos of the L.A. River, that with its ongoing restoration we should, in the spirit of positive thinking, imagine steelhead trout in its future.

Then I got word last week that this Wednesday the Arroyo Seco Foundation and city folks will be celebrating some more arroyo habitat enhancements by placing precisely four fish back into the increasingly less polluted stream.

Early Pasadena histories abound with stories of fishers returning from an arroyo afternoon with bountiful strings of trout. A favorite spot was a dammed-up pond that used to be a bit north of where the Colorado Street Bridge is now. Positively lousy with fat rainbows.

Even now, mostly thanks to Fish & Game plants of stocked fingerlings from hatcheries, you can spot trout in the stream beginning a few hundred yards into the mountains above JPL.

Many, or at least several, is the time I\'ve toted the fly rod up there to practice casting before heading for a Sierras fishing trip. Zero is the amount of times I\'ve landed a trout, though I have had a few strikes. Somehow I\'m better with wary wild browns on a barbless fly than whatever kind of farmed lunks the state plops into the Upper Arroyo.

But Wednesday at 3 p.m., at what is apparently called the Parker Mayberry Bridge, just below the Colorado bridge, Mayor Bill Bogaard and some ASF activists will plant not only the first of many trees as part of a new $2.5 million arroyo fix-up - they will plant two trout, along with two tiny, indigenous arroyo chub.

May the little jokers multiply.

Come on down and join the fun, which will include the opportunity to sign up to volunteer for work in the restoration program of 20 acres, removing non-native plants and cleaning up the arroyo stream to make it once again a fitting home for its eponymous chub.

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