Ok, so the other day I'm floating down the river and I get to the take out and there are 2 guys. One guy is holding the prettiest steelhead that I've ever seen, blue on the back and silver down the sides. This fish is unbelievably beautiful. The second guy holds a stringer of fish, most of them nice, but had obviously been in the water for awhile. So...how do you tell if a fish is a late summer fish or a winter fish?

This time of year, if there is a hint of red on it, it's likely a summer. Winters will be gunmetal over chrome, with silver streaks into the tail.

Besides appearance, winter fish will be totally ripe and ready to spawn meaning egg/milt sacks will be full. Summer fish will be roughly half ripe meaning eggs/milt will be a little over half mature. Summer fish spawn late winter/early spring, whereas winter hatchery fish will be pretty much ready to spawn on arrival.

There's nothing prettier than a fresh winter steel

There are some rivers, the Gold for example, where fresh fish arrive every month of the year. I often wonderd what to call a wild fish that arrives in Nov. or one that arrives in May. Becsue this is a 100% C&R fishery there is no way to see how mature the sex organs are.

The fish arriving now still wouldn't be spawning until early next spring though right? Wouldn't their eggs be in the same shape as a summer fish?

Without cutting open a fish, are there any other distinguishing factors? Coloration differences between summer/winter fish?

Look in their mouth, if they have what looks like to be little bugs in their mouth (I forget what they're called) it's definitely a summer run. If their mouth is clean, it's most likely a winter fish.

Hmmm....Good Question. I'd have to say that if the fish has red on it and is green on the back this time of the year through December it is a summer run. But this brings up another question. Durring February-April when the steelhead spawn and are in their spawning colors, which are the winter runs and wich are the summer runs? Both spawn at the same time right? So wouldn't they all be the same color?

Surecatch: This is not part of the topic but, it says your from "West Duvall." Where exactly are you talking about because I used to live there a couple years ago and the only thing west of there is the valley, unless you live in the valley or the hills accrosed from the town.

In general, a summer-run's caudal peduncle will be longer then that of a winter-run's.

The best way to descrive the caudal peducnle, I believe, is to describe it as that skinny portion of the fish between the anal and adipose fin and the tail.

A winter-run will be shorter in that area in proportion to the rest of its body when compared to a summer-run.

Twig,

When I read the topic line I wanted so bad to say that the summer fish all have a tan, and the winter fish are kinda' pale. At this time of year, that isn't far off. And others gave you good technical responses.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

I caught a summer steelhead last weekend that had a big red stripe. Six months from now in May, the summer runs will be bright, dark green on top with silver sides, white belly, and a hint of pink on the cheeks. Right now, in November, the fresh winter runs will look this way and have silver sides, dark back, and rosy cheeks.

Look at the following link for pics.

www.netbyte.net/steelheadman

Arent winter fish usually larger than a summer fish?

Winters aren't always bigger than summers.. Their is a strain of B run steelhead that enter the Columbia that on average are monsters. They go all way back to the Snake, Clearwater, Salmon, etc. The biggest on record is 35lbs 1 oz. The state record for WA is 32 lbs 12 oz out of the EF of the Lewis in SW WA. But there has been plenty of rumors of winter fish in the mid 30's on the OP.

But to define the difference, it's just run timing and maturity level when they return to the river.
Keith

Larger? More red? Ok, if that's the case, here's your Fisheries Test Du Jour. Here are 5 fish. Besides all being steelhead, which one's are winter or summer fish? Oh, all of these fish were caught this year and some even this week.

(Granted, you COULD cheat by checking all of my web sites. All the fish are there.)

Fish 1



Fish 2



Fish 3



Fish 4



Fish 5

Dates of catch would help with the ID.

If you were asking me, Dan, than no, no dates for you! That'd be too easy to ID these fish. It's a test.

Some were caught in May, and some were caught in November. One was even caught in July.

Seeing how winter fish don't come in in May (Ok, they do) and July, that wouldn't be very fair, now would it?

The REAL question I would be asking (salmog, smalma?) is if caudal peduncle length is an indicator of a winter/summer run, what environmental factors dictate caudal peduncle length? Also, genetically speaking, isn't a summer and winter fish the same fish? Why would the peduncle length change?

Do winter fish have shorter caudal peduncles, and in general, stockier bodies, for that "short" and "quick" burst of speed needed to shoot up the river, spawn, and head back out, all in a freshet or two?

Or, do summer fish have longer caudal peduncles, and in general, longer, leaner bodies, for that long, enduring, stay in the river? If they arrive in May and hang around until November, endurance is a factor.

Even as a Fisheries Graduate, I have some hunches, but no real answers.

Any working bios out there care to help on this one? Interesting stuff.

Kinda like asking our salmon gurus over at the UW what a "Columbia River Summer King" is. No one has a real answer.

Parker,

Too fun! Funny how they don't teach the important stuff in college, like how to ID winters and summers, eh?

I'm not aware that caudal peduncle length is correlated to winter/summer race ID. The most "general" indicator I'm aware of is sexual maturity at time of freshwater entry. The next most "general" is body morphology, where winter runs are usually heavier for a given length than summer runs, but there are so many exceptions that I don't place a lot of weight on it.

So my "unscientific, wild ass guess" is: 1 - S, 2 - W, 3 - S, 4 - W, 5 - S.

If I do badly enough on this test, I'll buy a copy of Dave Vedder's book about fishing with jigs, since I'm about the only one who didn't know kings would whack 'em.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

My answer is "C".....on all of them.

What? "C" isn't one of the choices?

Well, fargin' A then.............I dunno.

When in doubt, always answer "C".

I'll give out the results at the end of the week.

1-s 2-s 3-w 4-w 5-s 1- seems to be one of those fish some classify as a swinter

1.s
2.w
3.s
4.w
5.s

Dates of catch might be just as misleasding as they'd be helpful.

#2 is pretty clearly a wild winter run buck to me, but wild bucks with that coloration can be caught up into June.

#1 looks like a summer run to me, but it looks like the summer runs I catch out of the Sky and Stilly systems in October/November.

Anyway, those are my "guesses", and I'm stickin' to 'em.

Fish on...

Todd.

1) S
2) S
3) S
4) W
5) S

I'm going to say all summers and here's why:

You're wearing light clothing while holding all of the bright hens, so one could assume it was warm out that day. (spring/summer/fall) Bright fish = warm day = summer run.

It looks like Micropterus101 is holding the colored wild (unclipped) bucks because the person pictured is wearing his infamous camoflauge jacket. You guys fished together just recently and any winters in the NF Lewis now wouldn't already be dark.

So there's the rationale for my guess. Hopefully I'm at least half right...

Parker -
Like Salmo G I have not noticed that the caudal peduncle being longer or shorter on summer steelhead. Could well be that is the case but here in the North Sound rivers I have not noticed it. It might be that late summer fish tend to have loss condition thus the peduncle may look longer on the skinny fish, especially when compared to a fresh winter.

Summers and winters as well as resident rainbows are just different life histories of the same species and can breed with each other. With that it could be that there are some intermediate fish - sometimes folk call them swinters or tweeners.

Like your photos indicate it is hard to judge a summer/winter fish just by a photo. Have seen ocean fresh wild winter steelhead in November/December that are months from spawning (April/May) that look virtually the same as chrome hatchery summer in April/May. The reason of course is that both are in primo condition, chrome bright, and months from spawning.

To accurately separate a summer from a winter visually requires some judgement on the condition of the fish and consideration of the time of the year. In the spring/early summer the summer fish would be a well conditioned fish, lots of internal fat, and sexually immature. A winter's condition at the same time would depend on whether it had spawned or not. Spawn out winter females often are confused with early summers. Both fish can be chrome bright (with a week or two they can return to near ocean bright condition), slender fish, with very small undeveloped eggs (thumb size). However if the fish were cleaned it would be apparent that the winter had used most of its fat reserves while the summer would have large fat deposits. The male winters would be obivous maturing or mature fish or if they are spawnouts they would be obivously thinner and often beat up (if they remain in the river for an extended after spawning they may become bright once again).

In the fall/winter period one of the most reliable clues at least in the North Puget Sound area is that the summer fish usually have a number of parasitic copepods (typically in the mouth on its roof, gills, or occassionally at the base of the pectoral fins) while the winter fish don't. For the males man of the hatchery summer fish have a lime greenish back with a big red stripe (many of the wild summer fish are colored more trout like wiht a more bluish back). The hatchery males will typcially when dark will be grayish/black with a less pronounce red stripe. In late November and December the dark fish in our rivers is often winter fish as they spawn as much as a month earlier than a summer that has been in the river for 6 or more months.

The size of the fish may not be a very good clue depending on the area the fish are from. Again in the North Puget region the smallest fish on the average are our native summer, the next the hatchery winters, then the hatchery summers and finally our wild winters. Of course in each group there is a wide range in sizes; for example have seen wild Skagit/Sauk winters vary from as little as 4# to more than 30#.

To your quiz - A fun topic and chance for all us "experts" to make fools of ourselves - thanks.

As stated above to reliably separate summers from winters more than a photo is sometimes needed. That said I would say #1 and #5 are summers, #2 and #4 are winters. #3 is an interesting looking fish in that is unusually fat for an ocean run O mykiss but if force to pick one or the other I would have to go with a winter (on the average winters tend to be slightly heavier at a given length).

Tight lines
Smalma

I wish I could remember just where I heard that little tidbit of info because if memory serves me right, it was from a reliable source.

Also a question for 'ya...how often does breeding occur between winter and summer fish?? Because of the morphological differances between the differnt strains, it would seem to me that say a wild Deer Creek summer-steelhead and a wild Upper Skykomish summer-steelhead would be much more genetically similiar then say a wild summer-steelhead from the Skykomish and its winter-run cousin from the same river.

And finally, my guess...

1) Summer...longer caudual peduncle, not too fat plus it is a clipped fish that has that May/June Skamania strain look to it.

2)This was the toughest...Unclipped Winter Fish (Cook Creek??)...

3)Another toughy...I would say Winter fishy as its girth leads to believe it is sexually mature plus it looks to have a shorter caudual peduncle. But at the same time, that does not look like the typical Chambers Creek brat.

4)Jeeeeese...this is tougher then I thought. Another unclipped fish that looks to be caught the same day as #2 except this fish's dorsal is straight and clean so it looks to be a true wild fish. I'd have to say early wild winter fish.

5) Skamania stock summer-run. No doubt about it! A chrome, long, well conditioned hatchery fish...looks like she was a fish capable of seriously kicking your ass!

Sparky -
Had another tought on the peduncle length.

It has been known for sometime that the various meristic charcteristic (counts of various body parts) of trout/salmon can be influenced by the temperature at which the eggs are incubated. The first published work that I can remember was from the mid-1920s that showed that rainbow trout eggs (domestic stock) from the same parents incubated at different temperatures resulted in a difference in the number of vertebrae in the spine - more vertebrae might result in a longer appearing peduncle. Believe the work was published by a Dr. Hubbs (first name Carl?) from either the Mid-west or East Coast. For the life of me I can't remember whether cooler water resulted in more or less vertebrae - the more than 35 years since college has been just too long.

Based on the above it may be that there may geographic differences in the number of vertebrae. Inland fish (summer fish) might have different counts than coastal fish (mostly winters). A search by some young student with a little time might be able find more details than I could dredge from my foggy mind.

Tight lines
Smalma

Okay -for a newbie - can anyone give some links which define the differences between a winter run steelhead and a summer run steelhead? or just some definitions of the two?

And the results are.....

1 = Summer
2 = Winter
3 = Winter
4 = Winter
5 = Summer

And a big thanks to all that contributed. Good, fun, and knowledgeable thread.

Bob - you'd better lock this bad-boy down and delete it ASAP!

So much for my clothing theory...

Parker,

Just out of curiousity, what months were those fish caught in.

Thanks,
LT

April 03
Nov 03
Nov 03
Nov 03
May 03