I'm always seeing guys saying "its a summer run" in Nov and Dec when fish has a bit of color. Why? What is the deal? I guess if you can tell the fish already spawned by the crease then maybe it is. Just makes me and my friends laugh when a guy next to us catches a nice fish and it has a little color saying "summer run" Anyone have any input or stories?

Experience Schwic: Most of us have kept and cut open enough of these fish only to find their meat is white and eggs/milt gone to recognize a summer run despite how bright they may appear. You also get some late broodstock summerrun on a few of the OP rivers that have yet to spawn in Nov & Dec. Go figure. Hope this helps.

I look at the fish. All Steelhead are long but it seems summer run fish are alot longer and sleeker and the winter fish are a little bit more "squatty" yet still long. Make sense?

Another thing is "did you have fun?"

Did you enjoy yourself?

Do you have a feeling of accomplishment pulsing through you since you landed a Steelhead? Because you should, especially if you landed that meatwagon on a "non-OP" river!

Feel good about your accomplishment and let the other fellas without a winter or summer run on the bank do the talkin.

Summer-runs don't spawn until late winter or even spring, ergo: a highly-colored fish caught in November or December is most likely a summer-run.

Summerruns spawn in late January- early Feb. after the winterruns . They enter the rivers in the spring and trickle in through Sept. -Oct. They spend a average of 9- 10 months in the river prior to spawning. Winterruns spend a average of 3weeks to a month in the rivers and enter the rivers usually mid to late Nov and generally peak late Dec.- mid Jan. Summerruns are beautiful fish when they first come in but by late Sept. are starting to get thier spawning colors and lose alot of thier body fat , most seasoned steelheaders can regonize the differance between the two. Winters darken quick because they don't store body fat and come in ready to spawn and look bigger because of being full of eggs and sperm sacs, but the quality of the meat has been drained to pass on the nutriants to the eggs & sperm sacs. This is true as far as hatchery fish go but the native fish arrive a little later in Jan -March and spawn March through April . a good way to tell a summer from a winter is to look in thier mouth and see if there is Cocopods (a small parasite that attaches to the roof of the mouth that look a little like a sea lice ) these only attach themselfs when the water in the rivers are much warmer in the summer when the winterruns enter the river the water temp has dropped and the parasites are not active .

What's a cocopod, some kind of breakfast cereal? Do you mean copepod?

May be the general trend, but I've caught more than one spawned out summer fish in December.

One brat hen I caught last week, chrome with sea lice but long and lean about 7#. I thought maybe it's a real late summer run? It had white meat not orange but full skeins of eggs like a winter run. Things that make you go hmmm.

I've posted this before, but here are 5 pics of "swinter" fish. Which ones are winters and which ones are summers? I tried to find photos where the clothing won't give it away too much.

Enjoy!

This is like the "real or fake" female breasts test, which I did well at. It's difficult without touching them, BTW.

Same with fish. It's difficult without putting you're hands on them. I don't think I'll take the parker challenge.

I got a 19 out of 20 on the Boob Test, thank you!

PS. They are all coho!

when i get the runs in winter, I find it much more difficult to disrobe quickly than in the summmer....

just my .02.

I wonder if you missed the same one I did?