Terry Myers, a steelhead advocate and long-time angler, spent 2015 trying to catch a wild steelhead on a different river each month of the year. After successfully hooking a wild steelhead in all but two of the months, she set her sight on finding the last two fish to complete her quest ..read more

Billy Frank Jr in 1999, 25 years after the Federal decision restoring native fishing rights. Half a century ago, in Western Washington, a landmark ruling by a federal judge significantly enhanced both the economic and legal standing of Indigenous tribes within the state. While major legal decisions are often not named after the judges presiding over them, this ruling is an exception. Known widely as "The Boldt Decision," it is one of the most significant legal rulings concerning Native rights in the twentieth century. The case centered on tribes' fishing rights, but the ruling's broader impa ..read more

At this virtual public town hall, WDFW staff shared information about the scope, development, and timeline of a resident native trout harvest management policy. The new policy will apply to resident native rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, and their subspecies including coastal cutthroat, westslope cutthroat, and redband rainbow trout. This policy will not address native hatchery-origin trout, bull trout (a native char), or any non-native species ..read more

By WSC Science Advisor Guy Fleischer Every steelheader recognizes that small fin on the back of the fish just forward of the tail, the adipose fin. Adipose fins are only found in a few groups of fish, notably the Salmonidae, or salmon and trout family (including whitefishes and grayling), but also several other groups of fish that many of you have probably never heard of unless you are a fish geek, like me! These include smelt, percopsids (trout-perch), deep-sea lanternfishes (which, by the way, are essential in the diet of steelhead at sea), characins (piranhas and tetras), as well as some c ..read more

Blake Merwin from the Gig Harbor Fly Shop recently sat down with WSC Co-Founder and Board member Rich Simms for an episode of the Gig Harbor Fly Cast. You can also find the episode on the following podcast channels. Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify ..read more

In Part 1, we left off with an outstanding question that has not been evaluated for steelhead: Do their offspring stay close to home like Atlantic Salmon and Brown Trout, or do they disperse broadly? In review, if the fry are highly mobile, then high density and intense competition would likely lead them to seek out unoccupied habitats rather than reduce survival. If they stay close to home, then high densities will lead to increased mortality, and in that case, we must know something about the distribution of spawning adults to make inferences about habitat capacity.  My research has so ..read more

By Nick Chambers Steelhead possess a personality that any high school punk rocker kid would strive for.  Make a rule and they will break it, because let’s face it, they do whatever they want. Any effort to categorize them will only capture the average at best because they are all are really just doing their own thing. They come in early one year and on time the next, but always on their own schedule. They don’t listen to your prayers to the fish gods because it doesn’t matter much to them, and the more you want to find one the more they avoid you. This is what makes them so interesting t ..read more

On November 30, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the 2023-2024 coastal steelhead season. Included are special rules allowing the expansion of fishing from a floating device on two sections of the Hoh River during certain days of the week. This conservation measure, touted to help minimize impacts on wild steelhead, is a surprising reversal from the last couple of years that recognized the need to limit this highly effective fishing method at a time of chronically low steelhead returns. Despite last year's more stringent regulations, wild steelhead on the Hoh still face ..read more

Resident rainbow trout- adults and juveniles- are a critical life history component of wild steelhead populations. We believe they represent an opportunity to better protect and help recover wild steelhead. In June, the Wild Steelhead Coalition submitted a petition to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for a series of rainbow trout protections; we proposed that WDFW adopt the following rules: • Statewide year-round Catch-and-Release (all-size wild trout) in rivers and streams for all watersheds with wild steelhead • Statewide year-round Selective Gear Rules (all size wild trout) i ..read more

The Executive Summary from the 2008 WDFW Statewide Steelhead Management Plan. In 2004, the Director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife challenged the agency to develop a scientific foundation for a Statewide Steelhead Management Plan (SSMP). The scientific foundation for the SSMP comes from the Department’s steelhead science paper “Oncorhynchus mykiss: Assessment of Washington State’s Anadromous Populations and Programs” (Draft February 2, 2008), which provided several findings and recommendations to rebuild Washington’s wild stocks. The findings and recommendations represent t ..read more