10-17 SS Huge Steehead

 Are steelhead on the Clearwater any different than any other place? For example, is there any chance that Clearwater River steelhead are bigger than they are in other places? Our inimitable friend Josh Mills may just have an answer to that question.

My buddy and yours, Josh Mills, dropped in on my e-mail with a picture of him holding a whale… make the something that looked like a whale but it wasn’t the mammal, it was a fish. Specifically, an absolutely mammoth steelhead so I called Josh up and asked him to explain.  “I can’t believe how big these fish are and the reason that they are so big is that unlike a lot of the steelhead in a lot of the rivers around here, these are B-run fish meaning they have spent an additional year out in the North Pacific getting fatter, getting bigger and then returning with a lot more strength and a lot more cunning as we chase them on the Clearwater. The fish that are of origin on the Clearwater River are typically a little bigger and badder than other fish. The typical fish in the Grande Ronde is going to run between 5 and 10 pounds.The Klickitat is going to be 8 to 14. Each strain of fish has unique genetic traits to get a little bigger and it helps them to return to spawn. Some of it is a reflection of how much strength it takes to get back to where they’re going. Others are a regional adaptation that works out on the rivers themselves. It has to do with the genetic coding. These Clearwater fish are a size and a half to 2 sizes bigger.