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STEELHEAD
Confluency A LESSON IN HOW TO CATCH SUMMER STEELHEAD WHERE THE SNAKE AND CLEARWATER RIVERS MEET. LEWISTON—When the early steelhead retention season on Idaho’s Clearwater opens Aug. 1, scores of trollers and bobber fishermen will gather in the lower 11⁄2 miles of river to catch and bonk early-arriving A-runs and visiting stocks. The lower Clearwater’s perfect 54-degree water – influenced by temperature flow adjustments from Dworshak Dam – draws thousands of steelhead bound for the Salmon, Imnaha and Grande Ronde. These fish hold in the lower river in great numbers until the flow adjustments stop and until water temperatures in the Snake drop. What this channelized, rip-rap-levied fishery in downtown Lewiston lacks in aesthetic appeal, it makes up for in fat chromers that bite eagerly in the supercooled water, especially at night. For obsessive steelhead anglers watching fish counts, the best reason to visit the LC Valley in summer is measured in steelhead over Lower Granite Dam. Joe DuPont, Clearwater Region fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, says, “Once you see several hundred fish a day coming over Lower Granite, the fishing can be really good. If you see 1,000 or more, the fishing is likely to be excellent.” Lewiston and Clarkston, Wash., offer other advantages as summertime destinations, including great weather, cheap lodging, easy camping, local tackle shops with know how, a unique Taco Time with beer and wine and belt-driven fans, and a strange regional culinary fascination with “bite-sized” steak.
Nice early fish taken on a lighted plug, one of eight Erika Holmes caught in a 2009 dusk-to-mid-day steelhead marathon. (JEFF HOLMES)
LEWISTON FISH MARKET: U-CATCH During the heat of the LC Valley summer, the lower Clearwater is packed with 22- to 28-inch one-salt steelhead and a handful of slightly larger two-salt fish. While not the later arriving “B-run” steelhead for which the Clearwater is famous, earlyseason fish are numerous, fight hard and taste great. They are perhaps the finest, freshest steelhead that anglers are able to keep in the Snake River system. For example, even as massive waves of fresh steelhead flood into the lower Snake after Washington’s Sept. 1 opener, the vast majority of anglers leave the river sunburned and fishless due to high water temps and typically hot, sunny weather
during the peak of the migration. But in the lower Clearwater, beginning for catch-and-release in July and for retention in August, anglers and fish enjoy water temperatures in summer that the Snake doesn’t achieve until late October. “They average two to three hours a fish when it’s good … 10 to 12 when it’s slow,” said DuPont. “If the (spring) salmon season is any indication, and it often is, we should enjoy good to excellent steelheading this year.” The preseason forecast calls for 390,000 to pass upstream of Bonneville Dam in 2011 and DuPont estimates at least 50,000 fish will return to the Clearwater. He says 75 percent will be greater 2012 ATLAS [vol. 3]
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