Steelhead season returns to the Methow River

It’s been a busy week for Lance Rider.

Rider owns The Outdoorsman, a store in Winthrop, Washington, and he’s had a lot of customers this week buying flies and other essentials for steelhead fishing on the Methow River.

“It’s been nuts,” Rider said on Friday.

And for good reason.

For the first time in nine years, it’s steelhead season on the Methow River.

On Wednesday, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife opened angling for hatchery steelhead and coho salmon on the Methow from the mouth upstream to Burma Bridge and the Columbia River from Beebe Bridge upstream to Brewster. The season is open until further notice.

Steelhead in the upper Columbia River drainage are protected under the Endangered Species Act. For the past nine years, annual returns fell short of the 9,550 adult threshold at Priest Rapids Dam that allows for a season to be opened.

In a blog post, WDFW officials wrote that steelhead counts at Priest Rapids surpassed 9,336 adults and that more fish are still coming. They also expect wild steelhead escapement goals to be met, which allows them to reopen steelhead angling on the stream.

Opening a season is exciting news for anglers, but it comes with a serious conservation goal: culling hatchery fish.

Hatchery programs have been used to boost three of the four upper Columbia steelhead populations, including the Methow. During years with high returns, killing excess hachery-origin fish is meant to increase the proportion of wild steelhead that spawn to aid in the species’ recovery.

About 30% of the 2024 run is comprised of wild fish, according to WDFW.

To help out those wild fish, anglers on the Methow this fall are required to keep hatchery-origin steelhead, identified by a clipped adipose fin. A daily limit has been set at two fish per angler – either two hatchery steelhead, two coho or one of each.

Wild steelhead must be released and unharmed.

Other tributaries of the upper Columbia such as the Wenatchee and Okanogan remain closed and it’s unlikely that they’ll open, said Nicole Jordan, a WDFW spokesperson. A separate return threshold is set for opening those streams.

It’s unclear how long the Methow will stay open. Jordan said it depends on both angler and fish numbers, which are changing daily. The agency sends email updates on fishery season changes and posts them on its website.

Still, plenty of anglers were excited to get on the river while they could. Jordan saw several out on Wednesday morning, when the season opened just before sunrise. She even saw a steelhead get caught near Burma Bridge.

“There was a good amount of people,” she said.

Rider has also seen a good number of people.

“The way guys are coming in here you would think we’re the only place open in the world for steelhead,” he said.

Rider has owned The Outdoorsman since 2010. That was a year with a big run of steelhead and salmon, and it kept the store busy.

When steelhead fishing on the Methow closed after 2015, he held out hope that it would come back. But after almost a decade of poor runs, he began to wonder if it ever would.

“It has come back, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

The stretch of the Methow between Burma Road and the mouth at Pateros isn’t long – maybe 6 or 8 miles, Rider guessed – so it’s been crowded with anglers.

They don’t seem to mind, Rider said.

“Everyone that I’ve talked to said opening day there was a lot of people, but it didn’t matter because everyone was catching fish,” he said.