Weather rain forecast is moving around some as to day to day. The thing that looks like an event that will do someting is the Olympic side with the upper Satsop (Haywire Ridge) getting around 2 1/2 inches the 20th. This is supposed to take the gauge at the old highway bridge from 332 CFS to a peak 48 hours later to 1500 CFS around average flows date & time and then dropping fast. It looks like a couple of days or more of dirty water . The upper Chehalis looks different with Porter 372 CFS to a 1000 CFS but does not get near average flows date and time.

So it looks like muddy water for the lower tribs for a bit but above Fuller should stay clear and the Satsop clear before the Upper Chehalis water gets to Fuller hill. No matter how you look at it the bay is getting a shot of mud. https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/rfc/

On a side note the tribal set nets are getting a ton of filamentous algae which is a bitch to clear out of a net. This usually comes with the fall flow jump but evidently it it decided not to wait.

For those using the link to NWRFC above when you open the page look to the right side hit the forecast percipitation then the 240 hour forecast.

Update on fish. After some conversations this, this morning on start of incoming the coho moved out of the bay in numbers and by slack water this afternoon the catch was even up coho and chum. ( chum are bright barely any stripes) South side of the river from above Lakeside down stream much better catching than north side of the river. So upriver guys you have fish coming at you in numbers. Now what one does not know is if this is something that will continue or die out but the movement is substantial at the moment.

There have been a few times working traps when volumes just showed up. Once we had a couple hundred coho just jump in, no rain or anything. Another time we had a few hundred that came up on a freshet. An angler down near the mouth said he suddenly saw herds go by. No biting, but the moved in a hurry.

One time on first rain on really low water we had a one foot river jump in the day and as the employee did his evening rounds noticed fish moving but nothing not normal. Before he went to bed he did another evening check and headed right back to the office phone. It was now 11 in the evening and I shot up to see what was going on. From 5 to 11 PM we had nearly 2500 coho pour in. So we blocked the trap but damn near rolled the pond. As we used ground water that does not go up like the river so we had low summer flows with damn near the return all at once. The Coho return never did it like that again but it was educational.

Chum escapements are, or were, estimated based on live counts made weekly. One drought year a small southern HC stream was close to dry. No chum on count day. Then it rained. The next count day, a week later, the stream was full of spawned out dead chum. No live count that year.

The more time one spends on traps (where you can actually count and the fish) the more weird things you see.

In an effort to get summer pinks for a recovery program on the Dungeness we installed a trap low in the river. First day 400 coho were passed. In late summer. There are (or more accurately were) no known summer coho in that river.

Drove by a stream this weekend while out cutthroat fishing that they monitor for summer chum. 12,663 back as of Sunday which is a record. Great to see.
You mention a stream going nearly dry. One I fish at is completely dry in the summer down in the tideland. Up in the woods there is still water and fish. The chum fry are all gone by then but I assume what I’m seeing are coho. Pretty cool their ability to survive.
SF

Coho or cutthroat/steelhead.

Nice to see good chum numbers, the fish will be fed.

Good point. May have been cutthroat. I found documentation that mentions steelhead in this stream, but I’ve never observed on there.
My not seeing any doesn’t mean though that there still aren’t some around.
With those summer chum number plus the fall fish, the cutts should eat well this spring.
SF

When we did steelhead spawner surveys, weekly, on 100% of the anadromous zone on known numbers of fish were were lucky to see 10% of what was in the stream at that time.