Outdoors - Hunting and Fishing

POSTED: Thursday, Dec. 04, 2008

Take to the road for steelhead

Winter fishing around the state generally focuses on early entry or or so-called summer-run steelhead in the Columbia and Snake systems or in Puget Sound, peninsula or lower Columbia rivers on the winter-run variety.

Off-season stream fisheries, especially in the Columbia Basin, also focus on native, wild whitefish from December through March. While nowhere near as ferocious as their bigger cousins, steelhead, whitefish remain prolific and abundant in many eastside systems, are good eating fare if properly prepared and are obliging to fishers.

THE STATE OF STEELHEAD

Due to continuing concern for the status of native steelhead stocks throughout the Northwest, states including Washington have adopted conservative approaches to wild fish management until recovery plans can be finalized and implemented.

Five recognized stocks of steelhead in the Columbia and Snake Rivers received federal protection under the Endangered Species Act in the 1990s and more recently, steelhead stocks in greater Puget Sound river systems were brought into the ESA aegis.

At the same time, wild steelhead populations in north coast rivers of the Olympic Peninsula and in a number of southwest Washington streams remain relatively healthy.

Implementation of what state managers refer to as 'selective' fisheries requiring anglers to release wild fish while allowing them to keep cultured steelhead have enabled many sport fisheries to remain open.

Washington has a substantial hatchery-production program for both winter and summer stocks that is now sustaining sport fisheries in throughout the state.

These hatchery origin fish are readily identified by their missing adipose fins that are snipped off during the late stages of rearing, before they are released from state or tribal fish production facilities.

Washington is finalizing its environmental impact statement on the statewide steelhead management plan and following adoption of general policies that will guide wild stock restoration, will begin work on regional plans.

WHERE NATIVES ARE KEEPERS

While there is no limit on the number of hatchery-origin steelhead an angler may keep per year, wild fish are a rare and coveted trophy.

It's still permissible, however, to keep one wild steelhead per license year as long as that fish comes from one of 11 streams in Washington. One stream in Puget Sound, the Green/Duwamish system drops off the list at the end of November leaving, during the winter months, only a cluster of 10 streams on the north Olympic Peninsula from which that single wild steelhead may come.

The roster of rivers on which the wild steelhead retention rule applies include the Bogachiel, Calawah, Clearwater, Dickey, Hoh, Hoko, Pysht, Quillayute, Quinault and Sol Duc.

Dates may vary, but the keeper period generally runs from the first of December through April.

Always check the special regulations section of the Fishing in Washington regulations pamphlet for the exact dates enclosing the period during which a wild fish may be kept.

NOW IS THE TIME

Opportunities to catch hatchery steelhead are fairly uniform around the state during the winter, but whether the fish you are targeting are summer-runs or winter-run fish depends on where you are wetting a line.

In the Okanogan region and in Southeast Washington, the stocks in those rivers are typed as summer steelhead. Some of these races of steelhead entered the Columbia on their migration to spawn as early as June or July and are now ensconced in chilly inland streams for the winter.

Westside rivers from the north- and mid-coast south into the lower Columbia feature the winter-run variant of steelhead, the earliest returning of which are predominantly hatchery fish.

As temperatures dip towards freezing in Okanogan streams, action drops off for steelhead in all but the transition zones of the Methow and Okanogan rivers where they empty into Upper Columbia reservoirs.

A season with attendant gear regulations for whitefish can be had in Okanogan streams while you wait for spring weather.

The same can be said for Southeast Washington rivers such as the famed Grande Ronde and its lesser regional streams, but by March, as things thaw, those steelhead perk up and so does the last few weeks of the season targeting them.

On the west side of the Cascades, though summer steelhead can be found in many rivers, it's the winter returning fish that headline most fishing playbills.

In addition to producing good numbers of summer-run fish for fair-weather anglers, state hatcheries on the Southwest Washington's big three steelhead river systems, the Cowlitz, Lewis and Kalama maintain robust returns of hatchery winter-run steelhead.

Similarly, Chehalis system tributaries the Wynoochee and Satsop rivers retain their reputations as good adipose-clipped steelhead producers from December through February.

As mentioned, the only remaining streams where a wild keeper may come from are found on the north coasts relatively isolated streams. By far the most famous of the hatchery stocked wild fish producers are the cluster of streams in the Quillayute system (the Bogachiel Calawah, Dickey and Sol Duc).

But the nearby Hoh and Clearwater rivers hold good promise for winter fishers as does the Quinault River, though much of that system is under the independent jurisdiction of the Quinault Tribe.

Expect a relatively smooth transition from the early hatchery fish to the later returning wild stocks in these rivers.

Steelhead shortline practicianers also may want to plumb the Strait of Juan de Fuca tributaries the Hoko and Pysht rivers for their one keeper wild fish.

Doug Huddle, the Herald's outdoors correspondent, works in the Wildlife Program of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and has written a weekly hunting and fishing column for the Herald since 1983 that appears Saturdays. E-mail him at doug.huddle@bellinghamherald.com.