2021 Steelhead Season

The 2021 steelhead season in Washington proved to be a very challenging one. Runs across the coast are in decline and Washington had to adopt my more restrictive regulations along the coast this year to deal with it. This ended up limiting what gear could be used, meant no fishing out of a boat and led to a number of rivers closing early. However, I still managed to get out a number of times and found few fish in the long run.

By January I was itching to get out and I was able to pull off a quick morning outing with my buddy Chris. Our timing was definitely not ideal as flows were still up after a recent rain and while this outing did not result in any fish, it did allow me to dust off some casting and presentation cobwebs.

High water and no fish

The next trip out I joined my neighbor Dyllon on a trip to the Olympic Peninsula for a predominately swinging trip. The day was beautiful, but like the last trip, the river was still running high and made wading and fishing a bit more challenging than expected. Dyllon managed to pick up a couple of Whitefish nymphing, but other than that it was a long but pleasant day on the water with very little attention from the fish.

A beautiful day on the water - even with no fish

After this slow start to the season, the remainder of it was spent doing genetic sampling to help establish a genetic baseline to inform population dynamics and hatchery impacts on several coastal steelhead populations. This entailed taking a small fin clip for genetics as well as collecting scales from each fish to determine their age. Additionally, as there is limited genetic data for Coastal Cutthroat from the coast we were also going to collect any samples we could if we got any. Compared to past years that I have been on these rivers, this year certainly was harder to find fish. However, with a handful of outings it ended up being a relatively successful year.

A native Coastal Cutthroat

A bright hen

A big male steelhead

Another bright fish

Definitely hoping that next year will be a better year for steelhead along the coast as they have been in a rough spot for the last few seasons.