January 2026-Steelhead Season Is Upon Us!

Final Dates Available For The 2026 Winter Steelhead Season

January 21st-23rd
February 5th and 7th, 11th-14th and 19th-22nd the later two being recent cancellations blocks
March 26th and 27th

If you book one of the four day cancellation blocks I'll throw in a kicker! Trust me, it's worth it. If you'd like to improve your winter steelhead spey skills get in touch with me, Cell 253-255-5963.

---

WDFW's Emergency Rule Changes for 2025/26 Steelhead

The winter/spring steelhead season is here. Regulation changes by WDFW this year have rolled back to the "good ol' days!" is what I'm hearing from many. Do I agree with the changes? Not entirely, but somehow through the steelhead advisory committee process we landed where we are. So let's look at the pros and cons of these decisions.

First: They probably got the Hoh right at least to some degree. The upper Hoh above Morgan's Crossing will close to angling beginning March 1st, 2026. That change will significantly reduce the amount of upper river spawning impacts from anglers. That's a good thing. Does closing down this stretch of river improve spawning success? I'm sure it does, at least on some level. The states spawning survey process needs significant work and by work I mean a complete overhaul. Currently, surveyors float the river in pontoon boats, both state and tribal, and mark redd's with flagging tape. Either tying the ribbon to a rock and dropping it on the redd or by marking nearby brush. The river is then surveyed by helicopter in a small stretch of the river to aggregate spawning activity.

​Here's some of the problems with this method...high water covers many of the redd's and redd markers through gravel shifting. Often the river moves around significantly during high water scenarios. The other problem I'm noticing is the time slots the state decides to survey misses much of the spawning activity that happens during early season and late season spawning. There is significant spawning that occurs, depending on conditions, in the main stem of the Hoh or in the tributaries during late January and early February. There is also tons of spawning that happens well after the fishery closes in May and June when there is absolutely no surveying being done.

Second: Much of the arial survey work being done these days is more about counting anglers than it is redd's. This is a serious waste of state resources i.e. money in my opinion. You're already paying creel survey employees to monitor angler activity and catch rates. The state also requires guides to electronically report all of their fishing activity daily. I have discussed with regional managers for a long time that the resources being currently expended for all of these efforts could be eliminated or at least greatly reduced if we just put sonar on the rivers here on the OP to monitor incoming and outgoing fish. The argument is that the rivers are too volatile. Well, don't leave the wire in the river, if high water is coming...which is pretty obvious, then pull the sonar out and reinstall it when conditions permit. This technology has been around for decades...let's put it to use here on the OP. It's not without it's challenges, but the accuracy of fish counts would be much better than what is done now.

I do appreciate that the state is closing the upper reaches of the Hoh to fishing during March when there is some significant spawning happening. That is dependent, on river conditions at the time...if we have high water then it is a less significant spawning time frame. The part I can't understand however, why is it the only river on the north coast they are doing this with? The new regulations allow angling and fishing from a boat on the Bogachiel all the way to the National Park boundary thru March 31st and the park allows angling inside the park. The Calawah allows the same up to the north/south fork confluence through March 31st. The Sol Duc is open all the way up to the upper Klahowya bridge through March 31st. All of these areas are open to fishing from a boat again. The past several years has put restrictions on where boat angling could occur in the upper reaches of all the area rivers and that has been eliminated. That's unfortunate, it provided a lot of protected space for migrating steelhead. If you can only wade fish in these areas it greatly reduces angler impacts. That said, I do understand the impact of those rule changes. We've had numerous angler accidents over the past several years with people fishing/wading in areas that are very high risk. Drownings are obviously unacceptable, so closure of these upper reaches seems to be a much smarter management policy, but they went the opposite direction and opened them to boat angling.

I guess in time we will see what impacts the new rules will have on the fishery. I just hope that we don't end up with an early closure because of poor management policy. That negatively impacts much more than fisherman, but the entire regional economy. Lodging, retail, food service, gas stations, guides, fly shops and the industry as a whole.

​Any rule changes that occur should be about protecting the fish first, the angling community second including tribal fisheries. If we can't agree on that the fish loose.

---

---

Looking Ahead: Spring/Summer Chinook Seasons

This past spring steelhead season (2025), was the best I've seen in probably 25-30 years. Here's why...So a number of years back the state started boosting hatchery spring and summer chinook stocking in the Sol Duc state hatchery facility as did the tribal spring chinook hatchery at Bear creek. That effort was funded by the state to enhance chinook numbers in Puget Sound and the Straight of Juan De Fuca for Orca (killer whale) feeding. The side benefit should be a LOT more chinook in the Quillayute and Sol Duc rivers from late March through August. Until 2025, that wasn't really happening however. There has been significant Chinook angling opportunity reductions in Alaska over the past couple of summers and it appears to have made a massive difference in their return rates here on the OP. Most of my guide days during May and June were easy limits of spring chinook...without the use of bait, but I do fish hardware for these fish. Now I know most of my fly angling clients reading this have probably already tuned me out...but these are the best eating salmon we get all year and the only salmon I personally retain in fresh water. Copper river spring chinook salmon fillet's from Pike Place were $75/lb in 2024 and $100/lb in 2025. That seems crazy to me but there's obviously people out there that will pay that.

In fact, it was good enough that we had success swinging flies for springers all the way into July. I expect this trend to continue at least for the coming season. Some days my anglers would have a fish on the beach before I had the boat off the trailer or we'd have our retention limits in the first hole and walk the boat back up to the ramp. If you'd like to learn how to catch these fish on the fly, reach out to me, or if you'd like to catch some for the grill and don't care what technique it requires, short of fishing salmon roe, then I'm happy to do that as well. Based upon winter snow pack already I'm expecting an even better fishery with improved flows during June and July.