Wild Steelhead Coalition News and Updates
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Dear Wild Steelhead,
I search for you in these waters, wondering about your journey. Perhaps you're resting in some deep pool, your silver sides catching fragments of filtered light, recovering from an ocean crossing you had no choice but to endure. Or maybe you've already passed beyond reach, another ghost in rivers growing emptier each season.
At a time when U.S. fisheries face mounting ecological pressures—from climate change to habitat degradation—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is being forced to contend with severe budget reductions. These cuts threaten the foundation of science-based fisheries management in the United States. With staff reductions, project cancellations, and curtailed research capacity, NOAA's ability to monitor fish populations, enforce sustainable harvest regulations, and restore degraded ecosystems is being compromised just when it is most urgently needed.
These impacts will ripple through coastal communities, Indigenous fisheries, commercial and recreational sectors, and the fragile ecosystems on which they all depend. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of wild steelhead.
Read Lynda Mapes's in-depth investigative article for the Seattle Times exploring the complexity surrounding Washington’s state fish.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is revising its policy for wild trout harvest. It presents an opportunity to make meaningful changes that prioritize the long-term health of wild native trout populations. As stewards of these invaluable resources, we must ensure this policy reflects modern science, addresses emerging threats, and protects the interconnected life histories of resident and anadromous trout.
The 2024 NOAA Fisheries report highlights concerning ocean conditions off the Pacific coast, which are expected to negatively impact juvenile steelhead and salmon survival.
At the recent WDFW Coastal Steelhead Town Hall meeting, a key focus was the significant increase in wild steelhead runs, particularly in the Hoh and Quillayute rivers. Last season’s redd counts on the Hoh River were notably high, contributing to the estimated escapement used to calculate the total run size and harvest numbers. If current preliminary estimates hold, this year’s run size for the Hoh River would mark a record-setting increase, the highest in several decades.
On behalf of the Board of Directors and membership of the Wild Steelhead Coalition, please consider the following comments and recommendations regarding the current management and conservation strategies for wild trout in our state. Based on recent evaluations and scientific evidence, we believe the following changes are necessary to ensure the long-term sustainability and health of wild trout populations.
We can no longer afford to remain ignorant. Resident wild trout are an investment in the future of steelhead and should not be sacrificed for recreational “trout” fishing opportunities.
Save Our Wild Salmon released Lost River, a limited-edition print with an essay by renowned author and conservationist David James Duncan, in 2005. Photographer Frederic Ohringer created the image, and Patagonia underwrote the project.
The words are as poignant today as they were 19 years ago.
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 sights on finding the last two fish to complete her quest.
At this virtual public town hall, WDFW staff shared information about the scope, development, and timeline of a resident native trout harvest management policy.
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.
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.
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.
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 just doing their own thing.
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.
On October 27, the WDFW commission considered our petition, and we won big for Wild Steelhead when they rejected it. That’s right, they rejected our petition, and we can chalk it up squarely in the win column for wild rainbow trout and steelhead.
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
With wildfire seasons getting longer and hotter, the U.S. Forest Service says dropping fire retardant is a crucial tool, but the red chemical is lethal to aquatic life.
The debate around the efficacy and impact of fish hatcheries has been ongoing for decades. On the one hand, hatcheries have played a role in commercial, subsistence, and recreational fisheries. On the other, there's growing concern about their impact on wild fish populations.
Thanks to a recently published literature review led by Trout Unlimited, with financial support from the Wild Steelhead Coalition and others, we now have comprehensive data that shines more light on this issue.
Six years ago, the Wild Steelhead Coalition, Patagonia, and award-winning filmmaker Shane Anderson teamed up to produce a film series called Steelhead Country. The six-episode series explored the rise and fall of angling for wild steelhead in Washington State – from the heydey of steelheading on the Puyallup River to the litany of legendary rivers that are now closed throughout Puget Sound, including the mighty Skagit.
Concerned by the potential threat to the wild steelhead population, the Wild Steelhead Coalition recently submitted the following petition to the WDFW to limit rainbow trout harvest in areas where these two forms of Oncorhynchus mykiss coexist.
1969 was the Summer of Love and a turning point that created a love affair with steelhead, the Dean River, and ultimately the Olympic Peninsula.
The Hood Canal Bridge is again in the news, but not for the usual traffic or buffeting by weather headlines. Recognized as a significant impediment to migrating young steelhead, attempts are now being made to mitigate the impasse it makes for critical migrations of young steelhead heading out to sea.
Steelhead anglers are taking advantage of the highly anticipated steelhead fishing season, where portions of the Skagit and its major tributary, the Sauk, were opened for a directed recreational steelhead fishery beginning on March 25 under catch and release regulations.
However, this means the 2023 fishing season extends deep into the peak spawning time for steelhead compared to previous closures in mid-April, established specifically to protect spawning fish in the Skagit and Sauk mainstems.
It's a Monday evening and I've signed in to Zoom to listen to the third-and-final Virtual Town Hall on the 2023 Coastal Steelhead season hosted by Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). The previous two events have been open forums where the WDFW has both shared their ideas and solicited new ones for managing an already-scarce resource. Tonight, is the big reveal where the regulations will be announced.
We steelhead anglers naturally focus on those magnificent bright chrome and crimson summer and winter run adult steelhead just emerging from their time at sea. The source of our passion regarding issues that determine steelhead fate is focused on this particular part of their life history. Such devotion is understandable, given the charismatic nature of this beloved, powerful sea run fish and the gratifying moment of connecting with one streamside after all those casts. This obsession on spawning-run steelhead is reinforced by savvy marketing by guides, lodges, and equipment dealers, not to mention all those management conventions such as “escapement” and “redd counts” or even the feeder-lot designation of “brood stock.” We at the Wild Steelhead Coalition also employed spectacular images to advance the cause of conservation.
But this narrow focus may overlook a fuller understanding of the complex life history of steelhead.
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) received a request from the tribal and state co-managers in the Skagit River Basin of the Puget Sound to review a steelhead fishery resource management plan (RMP) under NMFS' Endangered Species Act for salmon and steelhead. This RMP would replace the previous expired plan and guide tribal ceremonial, subsistence, and commercial fisheries and state recreational fisheries in the Skagit River terminal area that impact steelhead, including direct and incidental fishery impacts.
NMFS has reviewed the plan and prepared a preliminary evaluation and pending determination (PEPD). NMFS has made this PEPD and a draft supplemental Environmental Assessment (EA) available for public review and comment.
Read WSC Science Advisor Guy Fleischer’s review of the documents.