So I've done a couple floats on the lower sky over the last few weeks chasing coho. As bycatch I've hooked 4 of what I believe to be wild Steelhead smolt. Two were hooked on eggs under a float, one was hooked on a sand shrimp under a float and the other was on a dick nite. Now I know there are resident trout in the river but down this low? I figured the general population of em would be up above the falls? I'm not sure how long wild steelhead smolt hang out in the river before heading to the salt. If they are steelhead smolt I'd assume they are from last year's winter run. Oh, and they are for sure not Cutthroat.

Here's one from today that took a big glob of eggs under a float...Sorry the pic is washed out. Notice there are only a few spots on the fins.:


And one more for good measure:


Fish was released. If these are wild steelhead smolt that I've been hooking I'd say that's a good sign for a healthy river system. Please let me know what you think they may be.

Thanks,

Drew

Steelhead aren't smolting at this time. Juvenile steelhead generally spend 2-3 years in freshwater before outmigrating. This particular fish looks a little on the large size to be an age-2.

I would wager a bet on it being a resident fish.

The other three that I've hooked have looked exactly like the fish in above pics.

These fish don't look like any rainbow that I've ever seen, but hey, I'm a newbie... Wish we could have got a better pic but I was trying to get it back in the water asap.

They look more like salmon..... Mini jacks? Don't look like steelhead to me.

That is a coho jack. Coho typically smolt at about 4 inches in length in spring and spend 1 winter in the ocean before returning the next fall---a total of ~1.5 years. That fish smolted this spring and thus only had ~5-6 months to grow from 4" to that size. I say it is a coho because a) it has a deeply forked tail, which steelhead do not, and b) the spotting is sparse on the dorsal and almost absent on the tail (like a coho, not like a steelhead), c) that is way too big for a steelhead smolt anyway (some resident rainbows that size though). A steelhead smolt will look just like a small rainbow trout at this time of year (~6 inches in length), and will only get silvery in the spring just before leaving (~6-8 inches). If there are alot of coho jacks around that bodes well for next years run of regular size adults!

Looks like a jack coho to me...

Keith

+1, mini jack coho

+3... coho jack 100%

I also agree coho jack -
Look at the lack of spots on the fish's dorsal fin, the larger/longer anal fin (result of salmon have more anal fin rays), the lack of spots on the forked tail, etc; expect that there was a bit of a button on the tip of the fish's snout. As an aside many of the coho jacks I have seen this year have been unusaually small - in that 11 to 14 inch range. Not sure what that means for next year except that the coho hitting the ocean this year did not find the expected/normal food supply.

To the question of steelhead/resident rainbows - typically the Puget sound wild steelhead pre-smolts in the fall are in the 5 to 6 inch range and migrating in the next spring as two year old fish (see a few one year and three fish) and rarely see winter steelhead smolts larger than 9 or 10 inches. It has also been the case that the O. mykiss populations in our rivers while mostly steelhead also included resident rainbows. Early in the resident rainbow life they show growth similar to the future smolts but decide to remain in the river. This fish usually mature at age 4 or 5 (just like steelhead) but of course are much smaller (typically in that 14 inch range at first spawning). However they do seem to survive spawning better than their anadromous cousins with some fish spawning as many as 5 or 6 times at ages as old as 10 or more.

Those resident rainbows have always been found in Puget Sound rivers and at times pretty low in the river systems. Have caught resident rainbows in the main Snohomish in the uypper end of tide water pushing 20 inches. Historically these fish were pretty common and developing information shows that they could be critically important to the over all O. mykiss populations, especailly during cycles of low marine survival.

Most of our rivers lost the majority of their resident rainbows due to harvest and release mortalities associated with the use of bait. There are a number of examples in the Puget Sound region where those potential resident rainbows are protected from those mortalities they have become significant portion of the river's over all O. mykiss spawning populations.

Tight lines
Curt

Thanks everybody. Coho jacks would make sense. Duh!

Anal fin = Salmon
















Coho

Look for the square tail if you think something is a steelhead.

floated sultan to monroe last week. we released 1 jack coho a bit bigger than yours just above 2 bit. a few more were rolling in the same hole. but they only wanted bait so we left.

Jack coho if you ask me. You hit him on eggs?

Bunker