December Is Here - Start Of The Winter Steelhead Season

Though steelheading isn't what it used to be, there are still some opportunities for thse that are willing to put in some time on a few of the local rivers or to travel to SW Washington or the coast.

Locally, the best chance of hooking up with a steelhead is to fish the Snohomish system, with the Skykomish and the Wallace Rivers producing the best chance at a fish. To a lesser extent the Snoqualimie River will also produce a few hatchery steelhead. These are the only rivers here in North Puget Sound that will give you a chance of catching a hatchery steelhead. Next year we should see some of our areas streams come back on line with some hatchery fish.

Prior to the past high water event we did see a few winter steelhead being caught in the Reiter Ponds section of the Sky as well as an odd fish on the Wallace. However, since the high water we have seen very few fish being caught. Hopefully, we sould see some improvement in the upcoming couple of weeks. Don't expect a real gang buster season as the plant numbers have not been extremely high, nor has been the % of returns upon those plants. Ocean survival has not been very good due to quite a number of factors.

Make sure to read your regulations very carefully this year as there are quite changes that have occured this season.