 The first few hundred feet of the river as it flows out of the lake provide spawning habitat for the Beardslee trout ("Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus f. beardsleei"), which is found nowhere else.Below the falls that are upriver from the mouth, the river supports stocks of coastal cutthroat trout, as well as winter and summer steelhead.The Makah tribe considered the Lyre to be their eastern boundary, though members of the Elwha Klallam tribe had settlements along the river as well, including the fishing village of Kwahamish.