Salmon Trout Steelheader Magazine - Oct-Nov 1981: Volume 15, Issue 2

Salmon Trout Steelheader Magazine - Oct-Nov 1981Volume 15, Issue 2

published in Portland, ORISSN#: 0029-3431#: K48854Paperback8 3/8 x 11, 78 pages
Features in this issue: Indians gillnet 100,000 steelhead
see Table of Contents
Frank William Amato, 75 years old, lives in Milwaukie, Oregon, but has also spent time in Portland, Oregon. He is the owner of Salmon Trout Steelheader and Flyfishing & Tying Journal.--------------------Frank Amato Publications, Inc. is the publisher of two major magazines: Salmon Trout Steeheader, Flyfishing & Tying Journal, and over 500 fishing and outdoor related book titles, plus several videos. Located in Portland, Oregon, Frank Amato has been accommodating outdoor readers for over 40 years. Frank Amato began with Salmon Trout Steelheader (STS) magazine in the 1960's.
Salmon Trout Steelheader started life with the finest West Coast fishing writers. The leadoff article "Will Chinook Take a Fly?" was written by world-famous British Columbia writer and angler, Roderick Haig-Brown.
Frank Amato wrote an article about the Dry Creek area on the Deschutes River on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. At the time the trout limit was 10 fish and STS immediately began to push for a two-trout limit. Today the trout fishing is much better in the Deschutes than in 1967, as it is in many other places as well.
Why did Frank Amato start Salmon Trout Steelheader? (The original name was Northwest Salmon Trout Steelheader.) In 1967 there was no regional fishing magazine in the entire United States. There was only the Big Three: Field & Stream, Sports Afield, and Outdoor Life. A few other fishing magazines existed, but none specializing in salmonids. STS was probably the first of the "specialty fishing magazines". Today there are two score more. Fly Fisherman started two years after STS and then the flood gates opened.
Frank Amato liked to read about Northwest fishing, but the few articles published each year in the "big three" left me wanting more. So his wife Gayle and he, and his original partner Joe Torres, scraped a few thousand dollars together and published the first issue of STS in August of 1967. Frank Amato had asked advice from Portlander Pete Hidy (fly-fishing book author) as to whether Frank Amato should start such a magazine and he casually dismissed the idea as a kid's dream and said at the least Frank Amato would need $50,000! Wow! Frank Amato decided to go ahead anyway.
For a long period of time it was a financial struggle to make STS work and his non-fishing partner who was more interested in the business end dropped out. In the ensuing 45 years Salmon Trout Steelheader has grown steadily and especially so in the past several years with his son Nick at the helm whose idea it was to take STS from six to ten issues per year.
Probably had there been no Roderick Haig-Brown there would be no Salmon Trout Steelheader, no Flyfishing & Tying Journal and none of the 500-plus fishing books we have published. His ideas in his many books inspired his fishing, his imagination and his desire to change fishing regulations and other management tools to protect the fish firstly and satisfy anglers secondly; for without the beautiful fish we are nothing.2002, Arts/Literature Coverage, Utne Independent Press Award