Fisheries Newswire:

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING STEELHEAD

Fish biologists have been counting their PIT tags for weeks now to add up
the damage from this year's paltry precipitation. First with an official
account is the Fish Passage Center, which found that spring chinook
survival from Lower Granite to McNary Dam was down from about 70 percent
in a normal year to 57 percent this time around. Steelhead survival,
according to PIT tag detections, was much worse. Normally on about a par
with spring chinook estimates, it came in at a miserable 17 percent to
McNary. But there is a caveat to all this: the fish could be playing a
fast one on fish managers, hanging back in the river and waiting until
next year to finish their migration. The phenomenon is called
"residualism" and it's a trait that steelhead are famous for.
http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/fishletter/fishltr129.html#2
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Interesting. With lower and warmer water this year this 'residualism' could be more prevalent. The answer should come with these rains. As the rivers recede I bet that fresh summer steelies will enter coastal rivers from tidewater and bays, and from Puget Sound into the rivers, and Columbia tributaries. There have been reports of huge schools of steelhead hanging out in real deep water in the Columbia. Look for some of these to head up into such as the Cow, Kalama, and Lewis; all of which already have lots of steelhead - but these will be fresher and more aggressive on the bite. Of course early fall salmon will be therre too. Yeeehaaaaw! - RT

RT, When our club was raising steelhead smolt ,we would refer to the smolt that wasn't released in the right time frame and just stay in the river as being residualized.
They never would go out the ocean. Some reason the state biologist had a certain day(which I can't remember) to open the raceways. We wanted to let them out when they were trying to jump out at the bottom of the raceway. Have a great time fishing ,Duck