Measuring Weight for Released Wild Steelhead

With the Wynoochee River dropping to a fishable level we've been able to get out and finally catch some nice fish.  This time of year we aim for our 2 hatchery fish limit, and in the process catch many wild steelhead.  We carefully make sure that the adipose fin is clipped prior to removing a fish in the net from the water.   

When there is a fin - we carefully get out of the boat and into the water for a quick picture and safe release.  

When catching a trophy native steelhead, such as this one, you want to know how big it is.  This particular fish measured 21.5 inches in girth.

So the question is, how do you calculate the weight of a fish by taking a measurement in inches?  We have 2 different methods to present here.  The easy one is the "length minus 20 rule."  This works best for steelhead between 25 and 35 inches in length.  You simply subtract 20 from the length to get the weight.  For example is your steelhead is 30 inches long, (30inches-20)=10lbs, by this method your fish would be 10lbs.

However, if your fish is over 25 inches or appears extra heavy in the middle, you should use the chart below.  Fortunately for us - we get to use this chart alot!!

*Also note that for large steelhead the girth is usually close to 1/2 the length.

Using this chart, the above pictured fish is approximately 26lbs.  (21.5inch girth*2)=43inch length

(credit flyanglersonline.com)

Hope this helps measure some big steelhead for you in the near future!

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The Wynoochee River 2014 Winter Season

The Winter Steelhead Season on the Wynoochee River has been a staple of our annual offerings for many years.  The river produces some very large hatchery winter steelhead and gets the largest number of hatchery smolts out of all the individual river systems open for fishing. Over 170,000 hatchery steelhead and we always do our best to get as many of those to the boat as possible for all of you.

First time customers are always pleasantly surprised when they brave the cold and rain and catch their first Winter Steelhead.  You can see how nice and big these hatchery fish are from Ken's 2013 fish below.

Unfortunately we've spent more time this year looking at the below graph than actually fishing!  The average flow for the Wynoochee River this time of year is between 1500 and 2500 cfs at Black Creek.  You can see from the image below we were well below our normal low right around 800-900cfs most of January and February until it shot up - overnight - to over 5000cfs on February 12th.  We didn't even get 1 day in between for an optimal fishery.

You can track this data yourself from our website:   Wynoochee River Page

On the left hand side there are links to both the actual current flows and the predicted flows shown below.

Right now from the above data it would appear that we should be back on the river fishing by Saturday!  We are very excited to get out and George, who is booked for this Saturday and has been rescheduled 3 times so far this season, would appreciate it if the forecast remains the same!

We hope to see you out there this weekend and maybe Mother Nature will bless the remaining 6 weeks of our season with moderate weather!!

Spring Chinook 2014

With the first Spring Chinook of the season making their way over Bonneville Dam, we are really starting to get excited for the 2014 Spring King Fishery!

Numbers vary from report to report but basically we're expecting about 100,000 MORE fish this year!!  Our staples are of course the Columbia and Cowlitz and both should be very productive this year.

	Total:	Cowlitz	Kalama	Lewis	Willamette	Upriver Total
2013	209000	5500	700	1600	141400	59800
2014	308000	7800	500	1100	239900	58700

The Lower River opens March 1st and the season is set to run now through April 7th.  We will switch over to the Cowlitz and go back to the Columbia when it re-opens if fishing is better there than on the Cowlitz.

We will be fishing the Columbia starting March 16th and invite everyone to come down, enjoy a reduced room rate at the Red Lion Vancouver and fish a day or two!

Use the link below to share our Blog on Facebook and Google+  - Great way to get buddies to commit to a fishing trip.

See you all soon!

Casey - 253-389-0359