Steelhead Fishing

The first written reference to the Olympic Peninsula Steelhead was from The Press Expedition of 1890.  They spent the hard winter of 1889-90 pushing a leaky party barge up the Elwha River. No one caught a fish all winter. This was back before there were any dams, loggers or nylon pollution to blame. Then one day in March, James Christie caught fourteen “salmon trout” in one hole. The expedition stopped to build a smoke house.

People have been coming to the Olympic Peninsula to fish for steelhead ever since. Steelhead have been called the fish of a thousand casts but no one who fishes for them bothers to count. A thousand casts for a fish is nothing compared to the ten thousand oar strokes in a drift boat or the hundreds of miles of white-knuckle driving on ice covered roads, or days of slogging muddy rainforest trails through tangles of vine maple and Devil’s Club that may be required to catch a steelhead. None of that seems to matter once you hear the words,

“Fish On!”  

Then watch a chrome plated trout peel out a hundred yards of line and jump into the sunrise as we follow through the rapids.

Things you will need to go steelhead fishing:

Patience

Was once thought to be a virtue by anglers and other philosophers. Fishing, according to Izaac Walton “begat habits of peace and patience to those who practiced it.” That was of course written in the 1600's. Fishing has gotten a lot worse since then but even now having patience is more important than ever. Steelhead fishing is a waiting game. First you must wait for the rain.  Then wait for the high water to drop and for that you will need some patience.

Clothing

Hooking a steelhead can actually increase a person's temperature to the point where they do not notice the cold until it is too late. Hypothermia is only one of many hazards of winter fishing that people who fish for steelhead care nothing about.

We'll start with your most important item of clothing, your choice of boots. The right boots can make the difference between endless hours of bone-chilling cold and amputation from frostbite induced gangrene.

It is important to not have a hole in your boots.  It is a curious law of science that the same water that leaks into a boot will seldom leak out again. Leaky boots can be patched but this is often a futile effort you discover when it is too late, you have wet feet.

Since we are fishing in a rainforest your choice of rain gear is crucial. Rain gear is usually the last thing people think of when they visit the rainforest. Some tourists mistakenly think they have rain gear. Sometimes, it's a thin plastic poncho that gets ripped when you try to get it on.  Here in the rainforest, if it ain't rubberized, it ain't rain gear. That doesn't mean you won't get wet if you have good rain gear. The trick is to just not care.

Food

You will want to bring a lunch on your steelhead fishing trip. Many people who fish for winter steelhead have adapted to the cold weather by growing an extra layer of fur and blubber. For this you may need to adjust your diet. Be sure to bring a lunch that includes the three basic steelhead fishing food groups, grease, sugar and donuts.

Gear

We fish all types of gear Bring your own gear if you want to go fishing. Use mine if you want to catch something.

Weather in the Hoh Rainforest

It’s been said the Eskimos have fifty different words for snow. Fishing guides have at least that many words for rain. These include driving rain, freezing rain, rain mixed with snow and many names that cannot be printed in the newspaper.

Periodic rainfall events are a blessing. Without a seasonal occurring moisture trend there would be no rainforest. We need periodic-gully washers to hatch the slugs, sprout the mushrooms and make the skunk cabbage bloom.  The seasonally adjusted jet stream pushes moisture-laden air over the icy mass of the Olympic Mountains with a resulting release of atmospheric moisture allowing significant moisture accumulations to flow down slope and form rivers.  Without rivers there would be no fish and if I couldn’t fish I’d have very little to write about.

Visitors to the Olympic Peninsula often ask,

“Is it always raining here?”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Visitors to the Hoh can expect sustained cloudbursts, isolated, localized showers and penetrating drizzle but rain? Not very often. It's too bad really because being wet is cool. If it doesn't rain on your trip to the rainforest you have been cheated out of a real nature experience.