Steelhead

Most anglers know Idaho is famous for its steelhead and Idaho Fish and Game's Ed Schriever gives us a picture of this year's fishery. The A's run first and the B's run second. That's up the Columbia River but generally speaking, B's, a higher proportion of that population of fish spend two years in the ocean so a two-year-old B steelhead is going to be between 12 and 15 pounds. The A run fish predominantly come back to the Snake River and the Salmon River drainage. So the Clearwater, more big fish and last year, the abundance was so low in the Clearwater that we actually closed the opportunity to harvest even hatchery fish in the Clearwater until we were sure we were going to have enough to meet our brood stock needs for the coming year. Again, in Idaho we do not allow the harvest of any natural origin fish. All fish harvested within the state, whether they are salmon or steelhead, in the sport fishery have come from a hatchery and have had their adipose fin clipped. This year, our guess right now, is that we are going to look at something around 20 1/2 thousand hatchery, adipose clipped steelhead to the Clearwater basin. That is going to make great fishing.