Hi, kinda new up here and have a question. We caught some great steelhead yesterday on the Sol Duc river with a guide. But what exactly is it? A trout, or salmon, or hybrid? Can't find the answer to this anwhere. Thanks!

It's a rainbow trout that goes out to the ocean like a salmon and returns to spawn. Unlike salmon, steelhead do not die after spawning and can return to the ocean again.

The steelhead, which was formerly classed with the Atlantic salmon and brown trout under the genus Salmo (S. gairdnerii) was, a few years ago, reclassified as Oncorhynchus, the genus that includes the Pacific salmons, and is now O. mykiss. The cutthroat suffered the same fate, Salmo clarki becoming Oncorhynchus clarki. The rainbow trout is perhaps best thought of as a landlocked steelhead. There are now eight species within the genus Oncorhynchus; O. tschawytscha (chinook), O. kisutch (coho), O. nerka (sockeye), O. gorbuscha (pink), O. keta (chum), O. masou (Japanese cherry salmon) O. mykiss and O. clarki. The anadromous form of the coastal cutthroat (O. clarki, subspecies clarki), routinely survives spawning and may spawn many times. A small percentage (almost never more than 15%) of steelhead survive to spawn a second time. If memory serves, however, there is a record of a California hatchery hen that returned seven times. An extremely small percentage of Japanese cherry salmon survive the rigors of spawning and the remaining five species all die shortly after.

Steelhead- the epitomy of everything that is good in life.

Preston........you took the words right out of my mouth!
Very informative!

Steelhead Trout


Life History and Ecology:
Oncorhynchus mykiss can be anadromous (steelhead) or freshwater resident (rainbow or redband) trout and under some circumstances, apparently yield offspring of the opposite form. Those that are anadromous can spend up to seven years in freshwater prior to smoltfication and then spend up to three years in salt water prior to spawning. Unlike other species of Oncorhynchus, except 0. clarki steelhead are capable of spawning more than once before they die. Morphologically, steelhead are distinguished from other salmon species by their steel-blue, blue-green or yellow-green upper-sides and head, white belly, pink cheeks and opercula, and vague pink to red band with many small black spots concentrated above the lateral line. Spawners are very dark and dusky and the red band along the lateral line is very pronounced. The size of steelhead at maturity depends primarily upon how long they have lived in the ocean or in lakes. Most of the steelhead returning to Washington streams weigh 2 to 5 kg (5 to I 0 pounds), although fish as large as 16 kg (35 lbs.) have been caught in the state's.

Steelhead and rainbow trout naturally occur throughout the eastern Pacific Ocean and in freshwater systems west of the Rocky Mountains, from northwest Mexico to the Kuskokwim River in Alaska.

And besides all this, they are just plan fun to catch!

Hope this tells you what a steelhead is.

Cowlitzfisherman


Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook?????

If a steelhead is a rainbow trout, then why not some steelhead stay in fresh to become a rainbow an vice versa? I believe they are different fish with very close genetics. As I remembered working at Puyallup's Trout Hatchery when I was a kid, I had witnessed vast difference in behavior b/w rainbows and steelhead. When you walk near their ponds, the rainbow fingerlings are always friendly and curious; they would come toward you and follow you around. As for the steelhead fingerlings, if they see you, they would head the opposite direction. At feeding time, the rainbows would go on a feeding frenzy like pirahnas. The steelhead would mostly feed on sinking food and were not as voracious feeders. So how can they be the same fish if they behave so diffently? If you happen to visit a hatchery, check this out for yourself then contemplate your findings with the literatures which claim that the two fish are the same. One last note, if they are the same, then they should mingle freely together at spawning time, right?

I have personally raised hundreds of thousands of steelhead for release in Cowlitz. They react the same way that trout do when they have been raised in pens and are hand fed food. I can tell you, first hand, that if you through a hand full of food, or sand into a net pen or race-way, the trout or steelhead (or salmon) smolts will boil the water looking for food! Some Steelhead do become resident trout. That's why some smolts never leave the water they were raised in, or wait for 3 or 4 years before they are ready. Not every fish is on the same clock, and for good reasons. Think about it!

Cowlitzfisherman,
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Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook???

The original and only natural range of the rainbow trout and steelhead was the Pacific coast from northern Mexico to southeastern Alaska and inland to the tributaries of the Columbia and Snake Rivers as far as the Clearwater and Salmon Rivers of Idaho. The steelhead and rainbow coexisted in this range and they are virtually indistinguishable. Most coastal streams still have very small populations of slow-growing, non-anadromous rainbows who usually exhibit life histories that feature migration from a small stream to a larger river or to a lake.