Olympic Peninsula Steelhead trip

We missed much of the rain down here last week, and outside of some snow on days 1 and 2, had cold and clear weather for our trip. Morning lows were usually in the mid -twenties, and temps got up to the mid forties during the day.

They are going through a very, very dry winter up there thus far. Rivers are low, clear and cold. The Steelhead returns thus far have been pretty light. The consensus is that many of the fish are waiting for a good push of water to really hit the rivers.

We based in Forks and spent a night down at the Kalach Lodge when we did a back-to-back on the Queets. All in all, we were able to fish every one of the 6 days we were up there. We hit the Queets, Hoh and Bogachiel. The latter two are only being drifted on the lower sections right now due to low water.

I will say this, there are a lot of grumpy anglers and guides up there right now with the slow conditions. We were bobber fishing and would average between 2-5 hookups each day. The conditions are removing a bit of Gel Cote off of the drift boats up there.

No monsters this year, but some solid fish, and with any trip, fishing was only half of the fun. here are a couple of pictures . . .


Attachment 14652Attachment 14653

Makes me miss home (WA). I use to take most of April off and fish the Hoh daily (when it was open then). 2-day floats for big wild steelies!