Skip to main content
idfg-badge

Idaho Fish and Game

Steelhead Run Could Be Memorable

idfg-staff
If you see a rain dance in progress, chances are the dancers are steelhead anglers. Unless low, warm water blocks the run, this fall's steelhead fishing should be as extraordinary as the chinook season this spring. Steelhead are pouring over Bonneville Dam already in numbers that suggest the preseason forecast of 249,300 fish at the first dam on the river system might be only half high enough. The run could exceed that of 1989-90 when more than 131,000 came over Lower Granite Dam into Idaho. A revised forecast will be presented to the Idaho Fish and Game Commission at its meeting in Driggs August 8-10. Catch-and-keep fishing begins September 1 except on the Clearwater River where no steelhead are kept until October 15. Anglers may catch and release steelhead after August 1. The same favorable river and ocean conditions that brought Idaho anglers the best hatchery chinook fishing in years this spring also contributed to the return of large numbers of steelhead. Fisheries biologists and anglers are worried about low, warm waterÑparticularly at the mouth of the Snake RiverÑthat can cause steelhead to hold up so long in the Columbia River that they are lost and never return to Idaho. Cooler weather and rain would help bring the steelhead home. Only hatchery steelheadÑidentified by a clipped adipose finÑmay be kept in Idaho.