Chehalis River Fishing

The Chehalis River is the most significant coastal river in the state of Washington not named the Columbia River.

The Chehalis River has also been the subject of significant controversy over the past few years revealing the fault lines between user groups, conservation objectives, and a variety of other concerns.

One dynamic that does seem to be clear for the 2024 salmon season is that in-river fisheries will once again bear the brunt of the conservation concerns, being the lowest on the totem pole of perceived value and having the smallest voice.

Before you dig in, I also have pages on key Chehalis River tributaries if you are more interested in those:

• Wynoochee River Fishing
• Satsop River Fishing
• Skookumchuck River Fishing

Chehalis River Salmon Fishing 2024

Fall salmon fishing on the Chehalis River is almost exclusively about coho salmon since that’s the primary species anglers hope to retain.

There will be chinook present, but generally not retainable most years. There will also be significant amounts of chum salmon, especially on the lower river, but most anglers just release these as the meat isn’t as sought after compared to coho.

Updated status on hatchery coho returning to the Chehalis River

Since I don’t have graphs for the mainstem Chehalis River hatchery return, I will show graphs of each tributary to help you keep tabs on the salmon return.

The above graphs will update every Thursday typically.

When to fish for coho on the Chehlias River?

Again, the below graphs are based on the returns to the Chehalis key tributaries: Wynoochee, Satsop, and Skookumchuck Rivers.

Wynoochee River

Satsop River

Skookumchuck River

While the best return is typically on the Satsop River, the Chehalis River mainstem is a great option to target, and the return timing more closely tracks that of the Skookumchuck River above.

I like to fish the Chehalis River for Coho in November for the most consistent success. As always, river flows based on how much rainfall drops in upper elevations often determine coho abundance timing.

Forecast for 2024 Chehalis River Coho

Coho stocks have been extremely strong throughout Grays Harbor the past two years, and 2024 is expected to be not quite as robust but still right around the ten-year average.

How to fish for Coho Salmon on the Chehalis River?

I have several important resources on PNWBestLife.com and the YouTube channel to help you become a better coho salmon angler.

There are two primary methods you should consider learning to maximize your coho fishing success:

1. Spinner fishing
2. Twitching jigs

If you want to learn more about river fishing for salmon in general, head over the aforementioned link. A key aspect of river fishing is learning to read water.

The Chehalis River has long runs of mostly gentle flowing water in many of the locations you will target for coho. Coho are often milling around in any of these softer flows and near underwater structures such as log jams and wood piles.

The key is to just cover enough water until you find a coho willing to bite. This requires confidence in the technique you are using, so you can keep moving and covering water if you’re not getting bit.

Once you do get bit, work that area, as there are often more coho present. You won’t always see coho rolling and giving away their position either, although that is certainly a helpful way to locate them.

Issues in determining salmon seasons during North of Falcon for the Chehalis River

For starters, I’m a newbie to this topic, and I’m using this section to give a greater voice to those who are being most impacted, that being the in-river sport fishing communities that do their salmon angling on Grays Harbor rivers, and more specifically the Chehalis River.

There’s an important document you need to be aware of called the Grays Harbor Management Plan. (GHMP)

It was an official policy of the WDFW Commission and it was in effect from the below dates:

Effective Date:  March 1, 2014

Termination Date:  December 31, 2023

That means it’s the document which should have guided the North of Falcon process in 2022-2023.

The GHMP is #1 about conservation, but also discusses equitable distribution between user groups such as marine sport fishing, tribal commercial, non-tribal commercial, and in-river sport fishing.

There are a few facts which should be known about the Chehalis River and chinook management that I will highlight here and you can come to your own conclusions about what’s going on.

I’m not going to speculate on the “behind the scenes bits” as I believe that would draw attention away from the simple facts on this topic which are paramount.

• The on-the-gravel goal for chinook in the Chehalis River is 9,754.
• The WDFW escapement estimate after all “approved fisheries” is 9,066 chinook

Why would we approve fisheries and harvest beyond the escapement goal?

The answer is that certain user groups have the ability to push harvest beyond management targets. This is clear even in the Puget Sound Chinook Management plan which is for ESA listed wild chinook.

These groups are outside the jurisdiction of WDFW. Here’s a few of them:

• State of Alaska – Sport and Commercial
• Nation of Canada – Sport and Commercial
• Treaty Indian Nations

We can write whatever policies we want to in our management plans and those groups are not necessarily bound to them. We bring some of these groups together in the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) and others such as Treaty tribes in North of Falcon (NoF), but WDFW policies which don’t become legally binding for those other user groups don’t have much teeth.

I’m not aware of the legal specifics, but I’m not sure the management plan for Grays Harbor holds as much weight as the one for Puget Sound on local treaty tribes because in the case of Puget Sound, there’s a federal agency which requires the management plan for prosecuting fisheries on ESA listed chinook.

The bottom line is that the GHMP is a nice conservation first document, but adhering to it seems to be aspirational rather than binding, and that is a total shame given the dire need for sustainable fisheries up and down the Pacific coast.

If it was binding, there would be no in-river fishery at all not just a catch-and-release fishery, as we saw with the Skykomish River summer chinook, but we would at least (probably) on paper meet escapement objectives.

If you’re reading this far and think I’m calling out one particular group, that’s not my intention and let me be more fair in this case:

The chinook harvest of Chehalis River chinook is NOT all happening outside of GHMP jurisdiction. There’s still marine sport harvest, there’s non-treaty commercial and non-treaty Chehalis Tribe.

Why would we allow any non-treaty commercial harvest on a resource not meeting escapement goals?

Why would WDFW negotiate with the Quinault tribe for a treaty commercial harvest which takes us below escapement goals even if all other harvest / impact was eliminated?

From a Quinault perspective, marine sport and commercial harvest prior to the terminal run is 10x (Alaska and Canada especially) what they’re proposing to take. How is that equitable? Is this how they hold WDFW and the federal side more accountable for being a serious player in the PFMC?

Does the state and federal level need to be much more serious about addressing conservation for the next PFMC? Absolutely! There’s won’t be a resource to manage at the current rate of environmental, predator and harvest pressure being applied to chinook up and down the coast.

The bottom line is that the first group to get shutdown continues to be the in-river side, which tends to the most able to target only hatchery salmon, yet WDFW seems to make concessions to other commercial fishery user groups fully within the GHMP jurisdiction. And I haven’t even started on the coho side of the discussion yet, but know that it follows a similar story arc.

Or would you like to turn your attention to wild steelhead management on the coast and in the Chehalis River? More pain, indeed.

Feel free to correct any of the above in the comments below, I will happily amend if you provide solid contradictory information, as this is what I know right now from my sources and reading on the situation.

Fishing Regulations on the Chehalis River for 2024-2025

Species	Date	Additional Rules
from the mouth (Hwy. 101 Bridge in Aberdeen) to Fuller Bridge (Keys Rd.) including all channels, sloughs, and interconnected waterways CRC (317)
All species	Aug. 1-Nov. 30	Single-point barbless hooks required.
	Aug. 1-Dec. 31	Two-Pole allowed.
Trout	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit. Except: Cutthroat trout and wild rainbow trout min. size 14”.
Other game fish	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit.
Salmon	Aug. 1-Sept. 15	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6. Release adults.
	Sept. 16-Nov. 30	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 2 adults. Release adult Chinook.
	Dec. 1-Dec. 31	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 1 adult. Release Chinook.
from Fuller Bridge (Keys Rd.) to South Elma Bridge (Wakefield Rd.) CRC (317)
All species	Aug. 1-Sept. 15	Bait prohibited.
	Aug. 1-Dec. 31	Two-Pole allowed.
	Aug. 1-Nov. 30	Single-point barbless hooks required.
Trout	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit. Except: Cutthroat trout and wild rainbow trout min. size 14”.
Other game fish	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit.
Salmon	Aug. 1-Sept. 15	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6. Release adults.
	Sept. 16-Sept. 30	Closed.
	Oct. 1-Nov. 30	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 2 adults. Release adult Chinook.
	Dec. 1-Dec. 31	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 1 adult. Release Chinook.
from South Elma Bridge (Wakefield Rd.) to the Black River CRC (317)
All species	Aug. 1-Nov. 30	Single-point barbless hooks required.
Trout	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit. Except: Cutthroat trout and wild rainbow trout min. size 14”.
Other game fish	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit.
Salmon	Oct. 1-Nov. 30	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 2 adults. Release adult Chinook.
	Dec. 1-Dec. 31	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 1 adult. Release Chinook.
from the Black River to the high bridge on Weyerhaeuser 1000 line CRC (315)
All species	Aug. 16-Nov. 30	Single-point barbless hooks required.
Trout	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit. Except: Cutthroat trout and wild rainbow trout min. size 14”.
Other game fish	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit.
Salmon	Oct. 1-Nov. 30	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 2 adults. Release adult Chinook.
	Dec. 1-Dec. 31	Min. size 12”. Daily limit 6 including no more than 1 adult. Release Chinook.
from high bridge on Weyerhaeuser 1000 line approx. 400 yards downstream of Roger Creek (south of Pe Ell) upstream including all forks CRC (315)
All species		Selective gear rules.
Trout	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit. Except: Release cutthroat trout and wild rainbow trout.
Other game fish	Sat. before Memorial Day-Apr. 15	Statewide min. size/daily limit.

Please refer to WDFW’s emergency rules page for a full list of rules that are in effect.

It’s your responsibility as the recreational angler to know ALL of these rules, not just what is discussed here on the blog.