The best way to keep the fish happy is to use a net that is big enough for the entire fish to fit into. It is essential that the fish are not dragged onto the shore or lifted out of the water. Because steelhead did not evolve with a thick portion of bone on the top section of their skull, even a small impact to the top of the head can cause bleeding inside the skull, brain bleeding. For this reason it is essential that we try to fight the fish in deep water, use a correct size net and never drag them into shallow water where damage to the top of their skull can occur. At Lost Forest Fishing Guides the guides have oversized nets that have a soft basket material that does not damage the fish’s scales or the protective mucus coating that keeps the fish safe from parasites.

I don’t want people to think that if they book a trip they won’t have a shot at a trophy steelhead. The guides for Lost Forest Fishing will give you the best chance at getting your flies in front of a big fish. This is the opportunity to hook and land the fish of a lifetime!

Steelhead are actually rainbow trout that have the capability to survive in both salt water and fresh water, the term for that is anadromous. There are very few anadromous fish species and even fewer trout that have the ability. Steelhead hatch from an egg that is deposited in a gravel bed, know as a redd, with hopefully thousands of other juvenile steelhead fish. They small steelhead spend time in the river until they are strong enough to make their way out of the river into the ocean. The time it takes to get to be strong enough to leave the rivers varies on the amount of food available to the fish. On the Olympic Peninsula, each river and the time fish spend in the river, is different. Hoh River steelhead, fish that are spawned in the Hoh River, can be big because the Hoh River is fertile and has a good amount of food available to them. Most of the fish leave in their first year and go out to the ocean. In rivers such as the upper portion of the Sol Duc River steelhead can live in the river for a year and sometimes more. The reason for this is because the amount of food available to the smolt, baby steelhead, is very limited. For this reason, the fish that return to the Sol Duc River early in the season, December and January, can be some of the biggest steelhead anywhere in the world!

The upper rivers are essential fish nurseries, providing food and shelter from hungry predators for the steelhead smolt and juvenile fish. It is an absolutely essential habitat to the few remaining breeding pairs of wild fish that return to their historic spawning ground. It is no secret that the populations of wild steelhead and salmon on the Olympic Peninsula, and indeed all over the Western United States where they are native to, are in a sharp decline. Historic numbers of steelhead are just no longer possible to sustain. There are many reasons why this is the case but a few of the problems can actually be defined. Number one is the current, and historic, amount of netting and over-fishing of Olympic Peninsula steelhead and salmon BEFORE they return to the rivers. This includes illegal fishing for Olympic Peninsula steelhead and salmon by foreign fishing fleets in international waters off the coast of the United States in the Pacific Ocean. Vessels wait offshore just outside of United States jurisdiction and illegally fish for Olympic Peninsula steelhead and salmon, taking them back to foreign countries where there is no regulation on the capture and sale of the endangered fish. There have even been unsubstantiated reports of domestic fishing vessels illegally selling fish to foreign vessels waiting offshore of Washington State in international waters. Whatever the case, over-fishing has taken a heavy toll on the populations of wild steelhead and salmon in the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula.

Another major contributor to the decline in the numbers of wild fish populations of steelhead in the Olympic Peninsula rivers like the Hoh River, Bogachiel River, Calawah River, Sol Duc River, Quileute River and Queets River just to name a few, is the loss of habitat. This could be the major reason that our rivers in the North West will most likely never see historic numbers of wild steelhead and salmon back in our rivers, the amount of habitat and spawning grounds needed for historic, pre-1900, is no longer in existence. This is due to the cold hard fact that so much of the historic spawning grounds that the steelhead and salmon use to reproduce, the redds, have been altered or have disappeared altogether. One main factor is that as humans, especially here in America, a country driven not by social concern or the concern for the environment and the animals, but driven by profit and financial growth prized above all else. The effect our attitude has had on the ecosystem and habitat that the steelhead and salmon need to be successful is staggering. Almost none of the steelhead and salmon habitat is unchanged or even similar to the way it was just one hundred years ago. Logging has taken a huge toll, destroying the delicate balance between the land and the rivers. The loss of trees, old growth trees, is devastating to the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula. Removing the old growth trees from around the river affects the river in a number of ways. When it rains hard on the Olympic Peninsula, the trees and undergrowth help to absorb and slow the runoff that makes its way into the rivers. Without the trees in place, massive amounts of sediment are washed into the rivers each year. This is devastating to the juvenile steelhead and salmon, choking them and destroying their gills, but also blanketing and suffocating the eggs of unborn fish still in the gravel on the bottom of the river.

We in the United States are producing far more greenhouse gasses than most other countries in the world, even though the population of the United States is a very small percentage of the global population. This is having an enormous effect on the natural world and is responsible for the warming of the planet we are currently experiencing, and this in turn is having a negative effect on the survivability of the steelhead and salmon once they actually reach the ocean. It is a referred to as poor ocean conditions. Only two cases of extreme ocean warming, also known as The Blob, have occurred off the coast of Washington, British Columbia and Alaska in recorded history. One was last summer, 2019, and the other was in 2015, both VERY recent. This is a condition where stagnant ocean conditions combined with extreme high air temps and high pressure turn the surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean into a scenario that more closely resembles something seen in the Gulf Coast. Ocean surface temperatures can reach up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Compared with the average surface temperatures of around 53 degrees Fahrenheit for the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington, it is a stark and terrifying departure. This departure shuts off the upwelling that brings cold water and fresh nutrients from the bottom of the ocean up to the surface so that animals on the low end of the food chain can use them to proliferate into huge swarms, such as krill and shrimp, two of the most important food sources for juvenile and adult steelhead and salmon. Without this upwelling of nutrients, the food chain is shut off, and all animals in every part of the food chain suffer.

A good example is the decline in the numbers of the Puget Sound Orca whale pods. There has not been a Orca birth in the last five years that has resulted in an Orca whale reaching maturity in Puget Sound. All newborn Orca whales have died before reaching adulthood. The number one source of food for Orca whales in Puget Sound are salmon and steelhead. With a decline in steelhead and salmon populations, the orca whales are finding it very difficult to survive. It doesn’t work to just protect the Orca or the steelhead or the salmon species, what really needs to be protected is the Pacific Ocean itself! As poor ocean conditions persist, driven by a rapidly changing climate exacerbated by human activity such as burning fossil fuel, the number of wild animals able to survive and rapidly adapt, not surprisingly, is very low. Hence, we are seeing a decline in populations across the board (look at the polar bear for example).

Now, after that being said, there are some positive things people can do personally to improve the wild steelhead and salmon populations. One thing that can help is to volunteer for the cause. Mike Donley is the owner and operator of Lost Forest Fishing Guides and he is dedicated to returning more fish to the rivers of the North West. One of the things that he does is work with the Olympic Peninsula Guides Association to try and affect policy at the state level in Olympia, Washington. It is important to know that the Washington Division of Fish and Wildlife has been underfunded for many years now. The state of Washington does not budget enough funding for the officers in the Division of Wildlife to effectively do their job. That means there is no regulation or oversight for horrible things like poaching and over-fishing on the Olympic Peninsula and other rivers in the state that rely on officers to regulate the illegal activity going on. So on the next ballot that has an option to give more funding to the Washington department of Fish and Wildlife, please vote to give more money. It could be the single most important short term positive fix that will make an impact immediately.

Another positive thing to do is to volunteer to help clean up the rivers and help protect and improve habitat. Be aware about not wading in the rivers during spawning season and looking for clearings in the gravel that denote steelhead spawning beds, redds. A huge killer of steelhead are people walking in the streams and stepping on the redds where fish are spawning. A single footstep can wipe out two thousand steelhead! So PLEASE be careful this late winter and spring and make sure you know what to look for and avoid when you are wading in a stream. With some education and some insight, together we can not only protect the levels of fish we have now, but also try to grow the populations of wild fish for the future.