Steelhead Influences by General Noel Money, Tommy Brayshaw & Roderick Haig-Brown

Art Lingren is the single best source for the history of British Columbia fly fishing I know of living today. We began correspondence on steelhead fly fishing in April of 1986, some of which was included in Dry Line Steelhead (written in 1987), and ever since he has been a vital source for information on B.C. rivers and fish populations. In 2008 Art provided information about B.C.'s headwater reaches of the Columbia River prior to the construction of Grand Coulee Dam in Washington as an aid to several of us working on developing an estimate of overall Columbia abundance of salmon and steelhead prior to Euro-American settlement. Importantly, Art does not "shoot from the hip," as the old saying goes. Instead he refers to his extensive library of historical, as well as more recent, angling books to provide precise answers to questions. Art and I have long had a mutual attraction to the writings of Roderick Haig-Brown, and to the larger attributes of the man himself through those writings. Although neither of us met Haig­ Brown, his influence on us has been profound, and as with all of us, Haig-Brown himself had important influences on his own life. We of European origins in North America are of relatively recent immigrant heritage compared to that of the original immigrants from Asia whose arrival is estimated as 130,000-15,000 years ago based on the controversy of differing findings -the Native Americans, or First Nations of today. Haig-Brown first came from England to the United States to work at an uncle's logging camp on the Stillaguamish River at age 18 or 19 in 1926, then to a similar camp on the Nimpkish River of northern Vancouver Island. His first anadromous fish encounters were those of bull trout and summer steelhead at Deer Creek of the North Fork Stillaguamish River.