To a commercial salmon troller, what's the next-best thing to being on the water?

For Bob Miller, it's working on salmon habitat.

Outside.

In the heat.

In the brush.

Near a creek.

Miller, clad in overalls, a heavy T-shirt and work boots, was using power tools to cut through brush and blackberries on Rogers Creek and the South Fork of the Coos River during the high-noon heat. Mike Lester, also a salmon troller - though he'd left the industry a decade ago - also was buzzing through berries and vines.

And they love it.

Lester said he'd had enough of increasing federal regulations on salmon fishing back in the 1990s.

“I fished forever,” Lester said. “I really respect the guys who have stayed fishing.”

Lester was one of the original fishermen to be hired through the state's Hire the Fisher program, back when salmon was in trouble a decade ago. Miller is one of the most recent additions to the program that was revived this year when federal rules limited - or eliminated, on much of the South Coast - commercial salmon seasons.

Some of the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board money approved by the Legislative Emergency Board in July is being channeled through the Coos Watershed Association for habitat work. The association has enough funding - $139,235 - to hire four fishermen to work for the next four months for habitat work and to hire another two-person crew for up to six months to conduct fish surveys. The Coquille Watershed Association also received a $195,450 grant for five fishermen to work up to a year on habitat work.

In the end, it's all about getting more salmon out in the ocean.

Work to be done

Rogers Creek is an example of what can be done with fishermen willing to work and lottery funds allocated to make it happen.

Three years ago, the association planted an assortment of trees to provide shade to an otherwise warm, uncovered little stream. The trees have grown, but so has the brush. The blackberry vines are huge and the berries are monstrous, said Lester.

The berries are a bonus, good for a snack during the day, Lester said, but they're not good for fish. They provide little shade and overtake just about anything in their path. A stream that's too warm is inhospitable to salmon.

That's where Lester and Miller use brute force to find the trees and tame the brush.

First, they seek out the bamboo stakes marking where seedlings were planted before and mark them with blue marking ribbons. Then they begin chopping and whacking and kicking and pulling and do it all over again.

On Wednesday, they were using power tools to mow down the 5-foot-tall grass, weeds and berry vines. At 1 p.m., they had to stop due to summer fire regulations. In another few years, the assortment of maple, western red cedar, fir and cottonwood trees will provide enough shade to block the briars from growing.

“We're a little bit behind on blackberry work,” association Executive Director Jon Souder said with a laugh.

This particular section of Rogers Creek “is good winter and summer (salmon) rearing habitat,” Souder said, looking around the area as if picturing what it would look like in another few years, once the trees have grown up to provide cool shade for the fish. “It's also good spawning habitat.”

Part of a package

Many salmon trollers are getting impatient. It's been more than four months since most knew they wouldn't have much of a season and little federal aid has been released yet.

But the state stepped up quickly - quickly, relative to the seemingly slow-moving gears of government progress. It was in March that Gov. Ted Kulongoski convened the first salmon summit and directed state agencies to help the fishing industry, even though it wasn't state rules or regulations that closed the seasons in the first place.

The OWEB funding for the watershed groups is just one way the state is helping. Others have included direct payments to fishermen and modified salmon seasons in state waters.

“I think the governor's very pleased that it's up and running and under way,” said Lonn Hoklin, the governor's communications director. “He believed very strongly that the state needed to step up and provide support. ... He looked at it as an Oregon problem, a human problem.”

Souder said the watershed associations still are reviewing applications and also using Cardinal Services Inc. for some of the initial application screening and applicant testing. But once that's done, it's up to the association to determine who is best for the job.

And he knows from past experience that fishermen are hard workers, he said.

Crews get paid wages of between $12 and $20 an hour, depending on the work that needs to be done, according to OWEB. Some work will last a few months, and other work will last up to a year.

Permanent positions aren't likely, Souder said, since the program - like other state aid programs - is designed to keep families afloat until federal aid is available or another fishing season or other job becomes available.

Hoklin agreed.

“It was to provide a bridge to the time the federal aid kicked in,” Hoklin said.

And that's OK with Miller, who was busy pulling grass and weeds, out in the sunshine, instead of in the wheelhouse or on the deck of a boat, pulling in salmon from the ocean.

His family is glad he's home every night, he said, and he likes the physical work. He can relate to the realization of doing something that will in turn, help sport and commercial fishermen.

“Now I'm going to put back,” Miller said of the habitat work and, in true fisherman determination, said, “I'm going to stick to this and learn all I can.”