Opening steelhead weekend on the Methow River

Published 9:24 am Monday, October 3, 2011

I was so bummed out about having to move on the opening weekend for summer-run steelhead on the Methow River in Eastern Washington that I asked my landlord for a reprieve.

She didn’t make me beg.

So I went fishing last weekend instead of moving and I’m glad I did.

I went with O’Claire Enstad early Saturday morning and we were fearful based on past opening weekends that the river would be a mob scene.

It wasn’t.

We showed up around 11 a.m. at one of my favorite holes and it was empty.

There were some spots of blood on some of the streamside rocks, so I suspect that there were people before us who had caught and cleaned fish, but they left us some.

O’Claire landed two chinook salmon jacks, a trout and a native steelhead from the hole, releasing them all.

In two days of fishing, we hooked six steelhead and landed four of them.

That wasn’t spectacular, but it was good fishing. And while there were people at most of the good runs, we could always find water to fish.

If you’re planning a trip, it might not be a bad idea. There was plenty of water in the river, a few fish, not too many anglers.

I talked to fish checker Keith Roe and he said the number of fishers were fewer than he could ever recall for an opening weekend. He was wondering whether people from the west side of the mountains didn’t want to pay for the expense gas to see if there were fish in the river.

The numbers over Wells Dam have been good, but there weren’t a lot of fish caught on the opener (the river opened midweek, so by opener, I’m, talking about the weekend.)

Roe said he believed he talked with about half the anglers on Saturday and recorded 8 or 9 hatchery fish caught and kept and 12 or 13 wild fish that had been released.

So he was wondering exactly where the fish were and why there weren’t more anglers.

He was also concerned about the ratio between hatchery and wild fish. The deal on the Methow is that you’re supposed to catch the hatchery fish and pull them out of the river so they don’t have a chance to spawn and affect the gene pool.

At the same time, they want to have a minimal affect on the wild fish so that they can spawn unmolested.

Roe is concerned that if that wild/hatchery ratio continues, the season will be shut down early to protect the wild fish. So you might continue going sooner rather than later.

I thought it was weird that we only landed only native fish, but last year there was an early slug of hatchery fish that were swept up by a ton of anglers, then most of the others stayed in the Columbia for several weeks, so its hard to say what’s happening right now.

If you’re planning a trip. I’d go not expecting huge numbers, but decent fishing.

I only hooked two of our six fish, O’Claire hooked four. But two steelhead on two half days of fishing (we left the river around 2 p.m. Sunday) is great fishing for me.

If you go, know that a six or seven weight rod is great. I always liked to use a 10-foot seven weight, single-handed rod. But all I used last weekend was my 11-foot Winston switch rod of which I am quickly thinking is spectacular. More on that later.

I used a sink-tip line, nine-foot leaders, and either a black or purple egg-sucking woolly bugger or a black articulated leech. I also caught one on an articulated black egg-sucking woolly bugger. (say that 10 times real fast.)

If you’ tie your own flies I’d also tie some of these in olive. The spawning chinook don’t like olive, Roe said, but the steelhead do.

I like weighted flies on the Methow, especially this year, because there seemed to be a lot of water and a strong current and I usually do better when my flies are down a little in the current.