Fishing Saves LivesTucker Biorn and Otto Berndt Photography - What Matters

This creek is not just home to a few fish it is where these kids will remember growing up and playing outdoors all summer long.This is the first reason we need to protect this creek.

For us, the creek is not just something to do, it is a home away from home. It is an escape from the noise and the people, it's a time where we can be boys.

This water should be a thriving habitat for many types of fish like steelhead and coastal trout but we abused this creek killing this ecosystem.

This small fish would call this creek home if we had taken care of our creeks. Now it has to live in an unnaturally warm water reservoir, where it is at the bottom of the food chain not the top where its rightful place is.

This shows an underwater picture of what a healthy creek would look like. Due to the dam, the low water in stretches of the creek that tend to go dry in the summer kill all the fish below the dam.

Over the 9+ hour we have spent fishing, we had one small bite that missed. This shows how badly we have treated this creek. It was one the best fisheries in the south bay area before the dam was put it in, but now we can barely see if a fish, let alone catch one.

I was thrilled with the first catfish I ever caught. Its name was Betsy and I think it was this fish that got me to truly love fishing. Fishing is one of my favorite things to do anytime of day, anywhere. I love it.

hiking(otto)For most of us, hiking is a weekly experience. We try to go every weekend to somewhere new. Most times we hike to a spot to fish or when backpacking we catch our own food rather than carrying it.

This shows the amount of water that is being trapped above Searsville Dam and not let down into the San Francisquito creek habitat. By letting the water flow into this habitat, it is killing the steelhead and coastal rainbow trout population.

Stanford did the Searsville Study to look at taking the Searsville Dam out to help the local fish population. Stanford wants to leave the dam in place and look at other ways to provide fish passage - like build a 50 foot tunnel through the dam or a fish bypass channel around the dam. Stanford will look at removing the dam again in the future if these options don’t work.

Every day hundreds of different chemicals are slowly seeping into the streams. Along with trash and other junk, people throw unwanted paint, insecticide, fertilizer and even waste oil.

What we can do What we can do? Hazardous waste disposal days happen once a month, dispose of your unwanted chemicals properly. Creek clean up days happen every week or so, do your part and help. Water monitoring is a good way to stay informed about the health of nearby streams.