This paper traces the history of Oregon Trout, an environmental organization in Portland, Oregon, from its beginning in the fall of 1983 through the spring of 1990, when it filed petitions on behalf of four stocks of Columbia and Snake River salmon under the Endangered Species Act. It focuses on Oregon Trout's efforts to preserve the wild salmon of the Columbia River as a contemporary example of anglers acting as environmentalists to conserve threatened or endangered species. According to historian John Reiger in American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, hunters and anglers have been acting in this role in the United States since the Civil War, well before the Progressive Era in which the conservation movement is generally thought to have originated. However, the paper contends that Oregon Trout's advocacy for the interests of fish rather than fishermen is unique in the tradition to which Reiger points.