Putah Creek Fishes: A Class Gyotaku Project

By Christopher M. Dewees

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On a crisp and sunny November morning last fall, along the shores of Putah Creek, a group of students quickly dropped their beach seining net when it was suddenly filled with returning adult salmon (which were immediately released!). That moment would have been unimaginable in the 1990s.

Putah Creek is a major Northern California stream that flows eastward from Lake County for more than 100 miles, past the towns of Winters and Davis, before entering the Sacramento River. In 1957, the Bureau of Reclamation (hereafter, Reclamation) built Monticello Dam, creating Lake Berryessa – one of the state’s largest reservoirs. That same year, Reclamation completed the Putah Diversion Dam, 8 miles downstream of Monticello Dam, diverting water for Solano County cities and agriculture. By the late 1980s, these diversions and major drought led to significant parts of Putah Creek going dry, causing major declines in local fish and wildlife. In 1990, the Putah Creek Council, UC Davis, and the City of Davis sued the Solano County Water Agency and Solano Water District for water releases to benefit fish and habitat. After 10 years of court battles, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, resulting in the Putah Creek Accords in 2000. This settlement agreement mandated the regular occurrence of seasonal flows to benefit fish and other wildlife, while still also meeting Solano County’s water needs. The agreement also included $25 million for restoration.

three people in a creek up to their waists all guiding a long fishing seine. — Figure 1. Left: Students practicing an active fish sampling technique – seining. Right: Kiana Lindblad holds up a Largemouth bass (*Micropterus salmoides*; Introduced).

a woman holds a fish in front of her. a man in the background does a light-hearted fun two-armed wave. — Figure 1. Left: Students practicing an active fish sampling technique – seining. Right: Kiana Lindblad holds up a Largemouth bass (*Micropterus salmoides*; Introduced).

Dr. Peter Moyle of UC Davis, California’s native freshwater fish guru, has been a key player in the Putah Creek settlement. It was his legacy class, more recently taught by Drs. John Durand and Andrew Rypel, that brought 40 students to the banks of Putah Creek on that Fall 2025 November morning. The field trip typically involves students, in groups of eight, trying out different active and passive fish sampling equipment, including traps, electrofishing, nets, and beach seines, and seeing which works best to collect different types of fishes.

Peter has been chatting with me for years about having the students create gyotaku prints of Putah Creek fishes to display on campus. Finally, in Fall 2025, we made it happen – Dr. Durand and I added fish printing to the Fish Biology and Conservation class field trip. 40 students, in groups of eight, tried each gear and direct gyotaku, a traditional Japanese fish printing art form. All the students learned fish printing and produced over 100 prints!

five people sit around a long conference room table with supplies for getting many individual fish gyotaku prints into the resultant two large collages now dispalyed in the lobby of the Center for Watershed Sciences Building. — Figure 2. Christopher Dewees and John Durand (right), and students (left) help to assemble smaller gyotaku prints into two larger collages. The students (from front to back) – Mady Dunlap, Joe Zeno, and Paris Lisi – are from the Fall 2025 WFC 120 class.

A few days later, a few students, some staff, and I got together and cut out the prints for collaging onto two large (40”x 72”) pieces of Okawara paper that I had printed with a substrate. I then collaged these prints, along with a couple of my own salmon prints, into two large panels. One panel represents the fishes common in the lower, warmer sections of the creek, while the other is made up of the mostly native species found in the cooler upstream waters.

The students and faculty enjoyed the project and are gratified to see their completed art piece on display. The prints have been scanned, and the original artwork is currently framed and hung in the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS) at UC Davis. A special thanks goes out to Dr. John Durand, Dr. Peter Moyle, and Miranda Bell Tilcock (CWS Deputy Director) for their enthusiastic support of this project.

Living in Davis since 1972, my perception of Putah Creek has included muddy dewatered sections, junked cars, tires, and appliances in the streambed, and invasive plants. However, since the settlement in 2000, Solano County Water Agency, California Department of Fish & Wildlife, and others have worked together to restore Putah Creek. Flow regimes have been implemented, gravel habitat for salmon spawning has improved, and native plants have been replanted. Today, bird populations have doubled (Dybala et al. 2018), non-native fish have declined (Jacinto et al. 2023), and Chinook salmon are returning to spawn in large numbers. Our gyotaku prints tell the story of the successful Putah Creek restoration, and displaying them at the Center for Watershed Sciences offers inspiration for future successful restorations across the state.

A gyotaku collage. There is a tan background and black-brown ink at the bottom to signify the sediment of the bottom of the creek. then different fish prints are pieced together – large fish, small fish – wide fish, narrow fish – black painted fish, colorful painted fish... — Figure 3. Collage of fishes found in the lower reaches of Putah Creek – there are bluegill, green sunfish, carp, largemouth bass, and pikeminnow.

three men stand in front of the two gyotaku collages. — Figure 5. From left to right, Peter Moyle, Christopher Dewees, and John Durand stand in front of the two gyotaku artworks that now hang in the entryway of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis.

About the Author

Christopher M. Dewees served as Marine Fisheries Specialist in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Conservation Biology 1972-2007. He earned a BS from University of Redlands, a MS in Fisheries from Cal Poly Humboldt and a Phd in Ecology from UC Davis. He is an internationally known gyotaku artist and co-founded the Nature Printing Society in 1976. His gyotaku can be seen at The Artery in Davis, Ren Brown Collection Gallery in Bodega Bay, and the Dolphin Gallery in Gualala.

Contact: cmdewees@cal.net

Portfolio: deweesnaturedesigns.com

Further Reading/Viewing

Learn more about gyotaku, the Japanese art of printing fish: