The short answer to this question is that it’s highly likely we WILL get to fish for winter steelhead on a majority of coastal rivers in Washington this 2024-2025 season.
Update on 12/1/2024: The answer is yes, we will get to fish for winter steelhead on many rivers according to WDFW News Release here.
The primary reason for that is the much better wild steelhead forecasts that WDFW unveiled earlier in October for rivers up and down the coast. Finally! Some good news on this front after several years of incredibly disappointing forecasts and perplexing fishing seasons that limited even the hatchery fishing opportunities in places with little to no impact on wild steelhead.
If you are just joining us on this topic, you can read my thoughts about the 2023-2024 winter steelhead season here. And for completeness here is the 2022-2023 steelhead preview post.
You should also visit WDFW’s coastal steelhead management page here.
Now that you are all caught up, let’s dig into the 2024-2025 forecasts and season expectations.
2024-2025 Coastal Winter Steelhead Forecast
Take a look at the above table. The % expected run-size over the escapement goal is positive for nearly every river system except the Humptulips! And for the most northern of river systems, it’s positive by a considerable amount.
Those positive numbers, when divided for all parties, which include treaty tribes like the Quinault and non-treaty tribes like the Chehalis, result in allowable sport impact limits on wild steelhead.
Keep in mind that sport anglers are not allowed to keep wild steelhead in any of these river systems, so the impacts are from encounters with wild steelhead, assuming a % release mortality rate.
By the way, we should all be doing our part to release these wild fish in the best shape possible, which is why you should have a knotless net and use it to land all steelhead instead of dragging them up on the bank. Oh, and also, it’s literally the regulations when selective gear rules are used (likely will be for all steelhead fisheries that can impact wild steelhead).
Let’s take a closer look at one of the most important river systems in question here, the Chehalis:
In 2022, the return came in below the escapement goal of 8,600 and below the forecast of 7,148 steelhead.
In 2023, the return ended up being an upside surprise, and now 2024 has a more promising forecast in front of us that will likely allow us to fish for hatchery steelhead in the Chehalis River and important tributaries.
You can see from the above the multi-decade trend for Chehalis River wild steelhead. We have brief periods of time where the returns are above the escapement goal, but the highs get lower, and the lows get lower over time.
Hence, the management concern that has stopped fishing seasons for the last few years.
Why am I focused on the Chehalis? Because with most of Puget Sound steelhead in far worse shape, most steelheaders will fish Chehalis River tributaries to get their fix. This is also where the vast majority of coastal river hatchery steelhead runs return to, and that’s where most of our opportunity needs to be concentrated.
Back to the first graphic, 490 is not a huge number for the sport impact limit, but it should absolutely allow for terminal hatchery areas to be open for the harvest of hatchery fish. Ideally, this will be paired with more extensive creel monitoring because we need to know the actual impact on wild fish from these fisheries.
If you get creel checked by WDFW personnel, don’t make the mistake saltwater anglers in Puget Sound have made by routinely lying to creel checkers, making their data unusable and causing extensive disruption and additional cost and complexity to those fisheries.
If these creel studies are done right, it could allow for more future hatchery steelhead opportunities even when wild steelhead numbers are below escapement.
Potential Winter Steelhead Fishing Opportunity in 2024-2025
Above is one of the slides WDFW presented on what’s possible, with green being the most likely, yellow being a question mark, and red being less likely. Red and the word “closed” translates to the default proposal being for no fishing opportunity in that timeframe.
That’s a lot of green, though, compared to the last two years! Also, SGR means Selective Gear Rules.
November 13 is the date of the next Town Hall meeting where the agreed to fishing plans will be communicated to the public, and by the last week of November we should see the final winter steelhead fishing rules
What season am I most excited to get back? It has to be the December Chehalis late coho and early steelhead season. The ability to target both on the same days in the same drifts is an incredible fishery.
Okay, so let’s say you’re pretty new to steelhead fishing and you’re curious about how to get started. You’re in luck! PNWBestLife has literally been built to help you on your journey. Check out some of our resources below:
- Full guide on how to fish for steelhead.
- Understanding steelhead timing and when to fish
- Where to fish for steelhead in Washington State
- Where to find steelhead on a river.
- How to read water to location steelhead.
And then there is of course our YouTube tutorial on how to fish for winter steelhead below:
Keep checking back; this won’t be the last time I write or film about steelhead in 2024-2025 if things go as I’m hoping they will!