This continues to amaze me!! I love it! Steelhead in So Cal and Northern Mexico! WOW!!

Region's anglers urged to let rare steelhead off hooks

Officials say as few as 200 of wild trout are in area's waters

By Terry Rodgers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

January 10, 2003

Catching a steelhead trout in the ocean off Southern California is about as rare as finding a pearl in an oyster and winning the lottery in the same day.

John Roe is one lucky angler.

The Laguna Hills resident hooked a 20-inch-long female steelhead while fishing from his kayak Dec. 30 at Dana Point Harbor.

Steelhead are rainbow trout that begin their lives in fresh water, then go to sea before returning to spawn in their original streams and rivers.

Officials with the National Marine Fisheries Service said they are pleased that Roe released the rare fish unharmed, and they're urging other anglers throughout Southern California to do the same if they hook a steelhead.

Wild steelhead can be identified by their trout-or salmon-like appearance and the presence of an adipose fin, a small fin on the fish's back between the dorsal and tail fins. The adipose fin has been clipped from all hatchery-raised steelhead in California since 1997, the same year several West Coast wild steelhead populations were placed on the list of endangered species.

"I had an idea they were pretty rare," said Roe, 40, who has caught nonendangered steelhead in the Klamath River in Northern California.

Roe said he hooked the 21/2-pound steelhead on 2-pound test fishing line using a curly tailed, lead-head jig that had been smeared with Smelly Jelly fish attractant.

Biologists verified that the fish was a steelhead based on a digital photo Roe took before he released it.

The rarest of all native steelhead in the United States are those between the Santa Maria River south of San Luis Obispo and the U.S.-Mexico border, where as few as 200 of the subspecies are left, said Craig Heberer, a federal fisheries biologist.

The fish hooked in Dana Point Harbor was just a few miles from San Mateo Creek, where a spawning population of steelhead was discovered in 1999. That discovery prompted federal officials to extend their original extinction boundary from Malibu Creek in northern Los Angeles County to the U.S.-Mexico border.


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Terry Rodgers: (619) 542-4566; terry.rodgers@uniontrib.com


Here's a link to an earlier post:

Steelhead in Baja California

Steelhead, warm place ?? How soon can we get the runs back so I can guide there instead ?????????????

I lived in the bay area for about 6 years. Their was a sign on a short stream just north of San Fransicio bay claiming to be the southernmost drainage still supporting steelhead on the west coast. I guess they have to change their sign now!