Salmo, Thanks for that reply. Nowyou've got my curiosity going. Did you catch any steelhead? Were there any big fish? Any spring chinook, etc. etc. I'll bet the country is spectacular.

Thread drift:

Tug,

Yes, I've caught steelhead every trip. Like all rivers up and down the coast, the returns are much lower than they used to be, indicating marine survival is the major issue. There are a few large fish, but I haven't caught any. My largest was 33.5", about 13 1/2 #. One trip I landed only one fish for 8 days, so don't get the idea that it is steelhead Shangrilaa. There are spring Chinook in June and into July. I've only caught them above the lower canyon in August after they've darkened up. I think they spawn in September. The country is spectacular; you fly in over glacier and snow capped mountains that are around 6 to 7,000' high and extremely rugged.

Salmo's post does a great job of describing what steelhead angling is all about in today's terms: It's about the places it takes us, plus the promise of meeting a specimen of a rare, magnificent species of fish if we get lucky.

In other words, it's mostly about the opportunity. Steelhead fishing is very nearly as rewarding as steelhead catching from my perspective, and I don't think I'm aone in that sentiment. There aren't enough wild steelhead around to justify harvest fisheries, but as long as there's one left swimming, there will always be enough to support today's tourism demand, which is essentially the CHANCE at hooking (and releasing) a wild unicorn.

The steelhead is our state fish. It has become a fish for the recs admire but not fish for in many parts of the state.

I guess any Steelheading I do any more is all about nostalgia. Reminds me of a quote from the late Harry Lemire. I think it went like this. "After Fly Fishing for more than 50 yrs., Steelhead fishing as I know it is gone" 2010. He passed in 2012.

It is rather depressing as to what we have lost resource-wise. I do agree with Salmo, to a point, that the experience counts more and more as we age and the pile of dead animals is less important.

The problem for Washingtonians is the need to elsewhere to even have the experience with a minimal chance at fish encounter.

I moved up from CA in '72 to attend Grad School and found that, for me and my specific interests, that I had better hunting and fishing in WA. Now, 50 years later, there is some (oddly, mostly hunting) that is better than ever but I must say that fishing has really dropped off in my specific areas of interest. But there are really pretty place to go out of state for a fix.

Maybe I can muster $8-10k for one of these days I have left? Been to the Dean in Sept. 2010. Epic trip, but this seems really over the top!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpMCBUat564

There's a lot to say about the steelheading experience. We have lost a treasure. What infuriates me is that there were and have been suggestions for at least improving protections for the steelhead resource, and they were ignored for politics. rather than reality.
There's an elephant in the room, and no one is talking about it, so I'll say it:
We can't have nets in the river three, four or five days per week on the Olympic Peninsula killing wild fish, and then again killing spawners on their way back to sea. Co-management does NOT work if the non-Indian government does not hold up its responsibilities to the other 98% of the citizens. I don't fully blame the tribes because we have willingly enabled the destruction of an irreplaceable resource. Insley has been an abomination for fish management as a governor. This is obvious when he jumped into action to save Orcas, but ignored the other salmon related businesses, and families for years while the resource continued to shrink. I've got a lot more to say, but won't at least here. I'm mad as hell and not going to take it any more! (P. S. The Nooksack closed today.)

I think Tug hits a nail on the head but it goes further than that. We have to recognize that every steelhead we kill this year is also a fraction of a fish we kill next year and the year after that. In streams in South America they have steelhead that have returned seven or eight times (I forget which). Since most repeat spawners are females, and their fecundity really jumps up, these are a lot of eggs that don't get deposited.

Killing kelts is also bad because they have already survived the rigors of spawning and are headed back down. While I know they didn't all return as repeats, one year on our study stream we passed about 50 females above the rack. We found one dead. ALL the others melted out down past the rack. Since I doubt that netted kelts were soled or recorded on fish tickets we have no real idea of the magnitude.

It is always interesting how steelhead fishing captivated anglers. An old fella who mentored me when I started fishing had caught thousands of salmon (saltwater) and steelhead in his lifetime. He always told me that he would rather catch one steelhead than twenty salmon. I think it is the challenge and effort of trying to catch one and the weather conditions (winter) an angler must combat.

Like Tug said, as long as there is a net fishery (and habitat degradation etc.) for steelhead there is no chance for recovery of the wild fish. Simple fact.

For me the appeal of steelhead is that they bite. The challenge is knowing where they hold, timing, how to present the correct bait/lure, etc. All things that you learn and can master. There could be a thousand salmon in a hole, and none will bite, regardless of what you do. Put one steelhead in the same hole, and I believe I can find a way to hook it.

Long time ago there was single panel comic called "Woody's World". Among other things, Woody fished steelhead. In one panel, he is standing in a river, in the rain. His wife asks "Steelhead. Is that in reference to the fish or the fisherman."

In my experience with steelhead it is not that they are really hard to catch; they are really hard to find and get the bait/lure to. You have to hunt them. Salmon are much more random. Once you find the steelie it is still necessary to present the offering. I also think that a fish in a stream is harder to land because of all the obstacles like rocks and logs. All in all, a much bigger challenge.

So, the experience of tough weather, tough fish to find, and tough fish to subdue add to the allure. I hope it never is completely lost.

I was lucky to live in Cowlitz County from 1973 through 1982. I caught a lot of steelhead on several rivers withing a thirty five mile range. There were steelhead everywhere, because the Game Department planted them everywhere. I didn't mind that they were hatchery fish. The Elochoman was crowded but phenomenal fishing. The real sleeper was the Coweeman. But the king of all was the Toutle pre-eruption.
I floated it from Kid Valley bridge down to the old Harry Morgan camp. The Cowlitz, even though great fishing, just wasn't for me.

Tug,

I know it doesn't seem intuitive, and it's hard to find believers among sport fishermen, but the treaty tribal netting of steelhead - with the likely exception of the Queets and Quinault - does not appear to be reducing the productivity of steelhead populations anywhere in WA state that I am aware of. I don't know one single fish biologist who thinks it does. What the netting does is reduce the number of adult steelhead in a river in a season. As crazy as it may seem, the netting on the OP doesn't appear to be causing an irreversible decline in wild steelhead productivity. I don't advocate managing the fish this way because it does maintain relic, instead of near maximum, numbers of fish in the river. I suspect this can, and will, go on for a very long time. The current co-management strategy of the state and tribes works well enough for the tribes that there is insufficient incentive for them to want to change.

I've posted this before, but I don't know how many believe me. That if there had been no fishing, as in none, zero, for steelhead by treaty and non-treaty fishermen since 1980, the wild steelhead run sizes today would still be just about exactly what we are seeing. Even though fishing has reduced the spawning escapements in all rivers by the number harvested (including incidental CNR mortality), the total runsizes (total = catch + escapement) would still be as low as what we are seeing today. This is because the huge reduction in marine survival rates is the proximate cause, or limiting factor, affecting run sizes that reach the river mouths each year. If there were no steelhead fishing whatever at the present time, and increase in returns would be barely noticable, and would easily fit in the category of random variation. So crappy returns are unavoidable. That is underscored by your note of the closure of the Nooksack River. Even in the absence of fishing, that hatchery run has struggled to get enough adult steelhead back to the hatchery rack to meet its broodstock goal of enough eggs to simply maintain the program. (It's a different question to ask why we continue a hatchery program that cannot produce harvestable fish.)

What zero netting would do is to increase the number of steelhead in the river. More fish per mile of river would almost certainly be noticed as more productive recreational fishing. But let me stress that is not the same as more biological productivity.

C'man brings up a significant point about repeat spawners. Respawners are more fecund, effectively increasing the spawning escapement without increasing the actual number of spawning fish. The need for respawners continues to be debated. Some think that since the numbers are low, actually or as a percentage of the population, that it doesn't matter. I strongly believe that they are essential to biological diversity. And the maxim of intelligent tinkering (management) is that you make certain to save all the parts. Treaty netting of spring Chinook removes steelhead kelts as a matter of incidental bycatch. I suspect that gives rise to at least part of the debate about respawners not being necessary to successful steelhead management.

Lifter mentions the allure of steelhead fishing. I don't think there is a good explanation - because I've tried, and I feel like every explanation I have come up with is inadequate. But the allure looks to be the same as seen among hard core Atlantic salmon fishers. We are addicts, and I, for one, don't want to be cured. Ah, SW WA in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, that was steelhead Heaven. I used to camp at Harry Morgan camp, and often ventured downstream into the canyon to fish the pocket water. That was a good place to lose a lot of terminal rigs.

I will add to Salmo's ideas that simple closing steelhead won't do much. They need massive numbers of salmon spawners to fertilize the stream. This has been shown in BC to increase R/S even in poor ocean conditions. It also increases most numbers because younger smolts are more abundant. But there is no way that we will see additional salmon on the grounds; the push is for lower goals.

You guys are speaking what I believe to be truth, but it sure isn't doing much to inspire "Christmas cheer." Merry Christmas, just the same, to all the displaced steelheaders....

Tug and SG mentioning fishing the Toutle and Harry Morgan Park brings back fond memories of fishing that river. An old friend (long ago passed away and like a second father to me) ) had a cabin on the lower Toutle the we would stay at when fishing there. The cabin, of course, washed away when St. Helens blew. Gorgeous steelhead and very good sized. Thanks for bringing back the memories.

I realize that much of the news about steelhead looks bad, especially when folks with any sort of long term memory chime in. I still believe that we have a chance, but a closing window, o recover wild steelhead to much larger numbers than now. Maybe not to historic highs, but lots more wild fish.

But, we have to do triage. The Green (KingCo, Cedar, Puyallup, and probably others in PS, simply are too developed and will continue to be developed. We will have to "lock up" wild fish watersheds and manage them first for natural resources. The other developed rivers go to major hatchery production with the wild stocks written off.

We do that and we'll have a chance. We continue to try and save wild fish everywhere and we will have nice museum runs to look at but not touch.

Salmo G.

With all due respect I do not agree with you on your assessment of our steelhead situation. I am not as up to date in Puget Sound issues, but I'm really aware of the O.P. situation. For one thing, we need many more spawners in our good habitat - which the Queets and Quinault has some of the best in the world- to provide in stream nutrients for juvenile fish to thrive. There is an ecological cycle to our streams that has been interrupted by diminishing returns of salmonids that when they spawn and die the entire ecosystem thrives, and not just steelhead. There are other mysterious factors involving the decline of our steelhead, but over harvest of weak stocks is the most egregious, and fixable solution right now.

Tug, no worries. Civil debate is a good thing.

The number of spawners a river system needs can be determined through spawner-recruit monitoring. I don't have intimate knowledge of all river basins, but from what I have seen, the WDFW steelhead spawning escapement goals determined in a 1984 exercise, are sufficient to above what is needed to maximize wild steelhead production in each river. That you point to the Queets and Quinault - the rivers I noted as likely exceptions - is noteworthy. The Quinault Tribe and WDFW have different escapement goals for those two rivers, with the Tribal goals being lower. To make that situation worse, IMO, the Tribe adopted a policy that hatchery and wild fish are the same, which science has demonstrated as not being true. I think this leaves those two basins often producing below their carrying capacity.

Meanwhile, with current conditions of low marine survival, greater production of smolts in freshwater can improve adult returns somewhat, but no where near as large as returns of 15 years ago, let alone 30 years ago. Meeting spawning escapement goals would be good, but it would not necessarily translate into productive recreational fishing. Many times over the past 15 to 20 years, steelhead haven't been able to produce even one recruit per spawner, a condition that if repeated consistently, leads to functional extinction. The best steelhead returns have occurred when freshwater smolt production was high and marine survival produced up to 2 or more recruits per spawner. Those kinds of environmental conditions simply are not happening, at least not with any regularity, in recent years.