Steelhead lurking in the muddy waters

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, December 10, 2003

OK, first things first. Most of our winter steelhead rivers right now look a lot like Ovaltine – thick, rich and chocolaty. The waters have dropped and cleared somewhat after a series of devastating floods, but they’re still not anything close to top fishing condition. And it’s going to take a while for all that silt to bleed through the system.

That being said, on those streams, or portions of streams, that are in decent shape, steelhead are being caught. Fishing, in fact, has been good to excellent at times on the coast, on certain fast-clearing southwest rivers, and even here, in steelhead nowheresville, on the upper Skykomish River.

“Outstanding,” said Bob Gooding at Olympic Sporting Goods in Forks. “Excellent winter steelheading so far. But the tradeoff is that the word gets around fast and pressure has been heavy on the Bogachiel and lower Calawah, the hot spots early in the season.”

Gooding said most of the hatchery fish are two-salts of 5 to 7 pounds, with a sprinkling of larger three-salt fish showing.

“The bigger fish usually run a little later, and so we should see more of them from here on,” he said.

Down in southwest Washington, the king is not on the throne. The Cowlitz, usually a fine early producer and the best single steelhead river in the state outside of the Columbia, has been so murky much of the time that fishing so far this winter has been spotty and pressure has been down.

“If you hit it on one of the good days, running maybe 6,200 to 6,500 cubic feet per second, it’s been OK,” said avid angler and Everett businessman Mike Greenleaf. “But it hasn’t been that low very often, and most of the guides down that way have been working the Wynoochee and North Fork Lewis instead.”

The Kalama, a short-run, fast-clearing stream, has been a top steelhead producer so far this winter season. State Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Joe Hymer, in Vancouver, said agency personnel have “recycled” some 250 winter steelhead on the river since Dec. 1, trucking them back downstream from the hatchery trap.

“That’s an unusually large number on the Kalama for this early in the season,” Hymer said. “It could mean an early return this year or, more optimistically, a good year coming. There seems to be a good population of early fish also in the Cowlitz, but flows have been so heavy that getting at ‘em has been the problem.”

The Elochoman, a small Columbia River tributary, is a good bet, he said, and hatchery personnel on the Lewis system have been trucking above-average numbers of steelhead downstream for this early in the run.

Closer to home, the Skykomish is producing under less than ideal conditions. Most anglers working the clearer water above the mouth of the muddy Sultan are heading on up to the Reiter ponds area, and hitting fish most days. Below the Sultan, a few brave souls are fishing with one-foot visibility and finding action.

“Don’t let that murky water scare you,” Greenleaf said, “because the Sultan-to-Monroe stretch is holding fish. You can’t boondog ‘em, though, because you have to slow everything down and keep it in front of their faces for a while. The way to do it is to anchor and pitch to the high-percentage water.”

Greenleaf said plunkers at Buck Island, on the upper edge of Monroe, and working the deeper water on the parking lot side of the Monroe bridge drift, are also scoring.

“You wouldn’t believe what those big floods did to the Sky,” he said. “A few old standby holes are gone, but man, there are a whole bunch of the prettiest new slots and holes you’ve ever seen. It’s going to be a joy to learn all that new stuff.”

He said there are also some still-bright coho to be had, odd for this late, from the Wallace flats down to the Taylor hole, using eggs or spinners.

Guide and Marysville resident Tom Nelson (tom@fishskagit.com) had a party on the Skykomish on Tuesday, hooking six and boating four nice hatchery fish.

“Tokul Creek, on the Snoqualmie, has also been good,” Nelson said, “and a friend told me they must have beached 60 on the Cascade (an upper Skagit tributary) over the weekend. It was red hot.”

With the dismal record and dearth of steelhead central and north Sound has had over the past number of years, Nelson said it behooves the registered steelheader to hit the crick when there’s any indication of a decent, early run, and that seems to be now, regardless of less-than-ideal water.

Jim Strege at Triangle Beverage in Snohomish (360-568-4276) said plunkers on the Snohomish River bars hit the first decent numbers of fresh winter steelhead last week, and that there have been several good days since, along with some not-so-good, in the low-visibility conditions.

“It’s a better start than last year, anyway,” he said. “Most of the fish are running 5 to 7 pounds or so, but we’ve weighed a couple just over 14 pounds.”

In the dirty water, plunkers are using big Spin N Glos with shrimp.

Strege is running his steelhead ladder again this winter, offering a guided fishing trip for two with North River Guide Service as first prize for the season’s largest fish. There are lots of other prizes, it’s free, and all you have to do is bring your fish to the shop and have it weighed.

The Fortson Hole on the North Fork Stillaguamish produced more than 20 fish for a crowd of 30 or 40 anglers on the early morning of Dec. 1, the changeover date from flies-only to all-tackle. Bob Ferber at Holiday Market Sports Center in Burlington (360-757-4361) said an unusually high percentage – maybe six or eight – were hatchery winter-runs. Many years, only leftover summer fish are taken in the “midnight circus” there.

Ferber said another good omen for a decent run of winter fish this year is the fact that steelhead have been caught recently by beach fishermen at Fort Casey and Ebey Landing (north of Fort Casey) on the west side of Whidbey Island.

The Skagit is very dirty below the Sauk, but in good shape above it.

Smelt: The Department of Fish and Wildlife has published its Columbia River smelt forecast for 2004, and the outlook is excellent.

“It should be another very strong run,” biologist Joe Hymer said. “It should come on for recreational dippers in the lower Cowlitz in late January, and build through February and into March.”

Hymer said seasons and limits will be posted on the agency’s Web site about Dec. 19.

Crab protest: Organizers of last Saturday’s recreational crabber’s protest at Port Townsend seemed reasonably satisfied with the “several hundred” people, cars, pickups and boats in attendance. The gathering was an attempt to convince state Fish and Wildlife Commission members, meeting at Fort Worden, to readjust 10-year-old quotas to better reflect the huge increase in recreational crabbing interest on Puget Sound in the past decade.

Bounty fishing: A report from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission gives the most recent data on the Columbia/Snake river pikeminnow bounty program, and shows there are big bucks involved. The 2003 program was designed to eliminate a certain percentage of the predatory fish (once called squawfish) from the river systems, thus saving a substantial number of salmon and steelhead smolts. The program ended Oct. 12. The commission paid rod-and-reel participants $1 million for a total of 197,977 fish. Catches have ranged from 189,710 in 2000, to 239,964 in 2001.

Some anglers apparently regard the bounty fishery as a part-time job. The top fisher, a woman, caught 3,905 pikeminnows over the minimum length of 9 inches, and collected just under $24,000.

Fewer than 8 percent of all bounty anglers caught 25 percent of the total.

Anglers are paid on a sliding scale, starting at $4 per pikeminnow for the first 100, and going up from there.