leaning alders and towering conifers, rock gardens with granite teeth that will test any boatman, water clear as old gin, complex and confounding, a place as beautiful as any cathedral. But the winter steelhead demand their due, and they deserve it because that’s why we come here, to match tackle with one of the healthiest runs of truly wild steelhead left in the lower Northwest. Thousands of wild steelhead continue to bless this river, partially because of its pristine habitat, rock garden hidey-holes, rapid tailouts and snarls of white water. And partly because of a former grassroots enhancement program launched by fishing guides to perpetuate wild steelhead. The Snider Creek Steelhead Enhancement Program was a rearing pond project of the Olympic Peninsula Guides’ Association (OPGA), which since 1986 has stocked upwards of 100,000 wild steelhead smolts a year in the Sol Duc. Their production routinely doubles the number of wild
steelhead available in the Sol Duc. The enhancement program ended in October 2011 when Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) refused to renew the OPGA permit, claiming it was not compatible with state efforts to maintain the Sol Duc as a wild steelhead river. Wild steelhead presently released from the Snider Creek project will continue to return over the next two years as early fish, but after 2014 the number of steelhead in the river in January and February is expected to decline. Wild spawned steelhead typically don’t become avaialble until late Feburary, March or April. Snider Creek winter-run spawners were selectively sport-caught from the native gene pool, played gently to hand, tethered and floated down river to collection trucks. Spawners were relocated to Snider Creek tanks to ripen, where eggs were goosed from the hens, milt from the bucks and the fertilized wild eggs moved to the
Wild Sol Duc Snider Creek steelhead held for spawning. The Kenmore Air Destination Magazine
HARBORS |
23