Early Winter Steelhead on the Alsea River

The past few years, the Alsea River has had a slow start to it's winter steelhead season. However, things can swing into action faster than you can call in sick to work on a rainy day. A great deal of my time online in December and January is spent hitting the refresh button on the NOAA river level gauge waiting for that bump and the first group of fish that ride the wave in from tidewater. The fish that move early tend to also move quickly. Some of the lower river spots that are popular areas for salmon anglers can be productive, but hatchery fish harvest numbers for the season have drastically increased on the North Fork vs. the lower river in the past 10 years. That harvest data doesn't do justice to the fact that the earliest winter steelhead are typically caught by lower river plunkers targeting salmon.

During high water events, steelhead will travel closer to the shoreline than salmon in the same areas. The Mike Bauer boat launch has the Caddilac of plunking shacks. complete with a handicapped access fishing platform, a woodburning stove, and a nearby restroom with a flushing toilet. If the water is high and muddy, don't rule out an opportunity to stay warm and dry while waiting for the bell on your rod tip to ring. Cured prawns or eggs with a spin-n-glow plunked in travel lanes in the current closer to shore are a healthy snack for fish on the move.

Regardless of water level, there are a couple lower river staging areas where hatchery fish tend to congregate before moving upriver. Blackberry Campground and Five Rivers Boat Launch have been two remote release sites for twenty thousand traditional broodstock hatchery raised smolts each year since 2012. Most traditional hatchery broodstock tend to jet straight to the hatchery, and the ones that bite are more commonly used for table fare of the anglers who catch them, rather than used for spawning at the hatchery. This is somewhat problematic, as it tends to breed genetics that create hatchery fish that are more successful at reaching the trap than the dinner table. While wild broodstock smolts produce an increased harvest of hatchery adults, these forty thousand traditional hatchery broodstock are released at lower river locations with the intention of them slowing their upriver journey at the locations where they were released as smolts, presenting more angler opportunity for harvest. Unfortunately, harvest data has been inconclusive that these remote releases have actually improved lower river harvest opportunity. The Alsea Sportsman's Association has (unsuccessfully) requested that the regional fish biologist plant forty thousand wild broodstock smolts at the lower river remote release sites (in place of the traditional hatchery broodstock) in an effort for this practice to better serve it's intended purpose of increased harvest opportunity.

Prior to the introduction of the wild broodstock program in 1999, forty thousand smolts were planted into Fall Creek, an Alsea basin tributary where the Oregon Hatchery Research Center is located. Prior to 2006, twenty thousand traditional broodstock smolts were released at Five Rivers Boat Launch and Blackberry Campground as well as Mill Creek and Salmonberry Park, totaling eighty thousand smolts released during different stages of the season, in a practice known as "scatter planting," When you hear old timers talk about "the good ol' days," they're likely referring to a time when they saw a return on a more calculated effort being put into smolt releases of traditional broodstock.

For now, the Blackberry and Five Rivers sites (in theory) are a good option for targeting fresh chrome in the lower river. Unfortunately, many of the traditional broodstock adults still tend to race for the hatchery. It is surely not a coincidence that the North Fork opened to fishing up to the hatchery the same year that the wild broodstock program began in 1999, and that some of the largest creel check numbers occurred 3-4 years afterwards. Unfortunately, due to a few years of consecutive losses of wild broodstock eggs, the Alsea has been in a downswing of creel check numbers in more recent history. Lack of participation in wild broodstock collection by anglers and guides alike due to a mistrust of the program has been an arduous point of contention that has left the fishery in a perpetual state of disrepair. Upgrades to equipment, collection practices and collection sites have all been made in an effort to prevent history from repeating itself, but with most guides directing their attention to other fisheries, collecting wild broodstock has become a challenge for the hatchery. Last year the program depended mostly upon fish caught in the hatchery trap and a handful of bank anglers who collected wild broodstock within sight of the hatchery.

The South Fork of the Alsea contributes a majority of the silt and debris that tend to stain the water in the mainstem of the river. When the water is muddy downstream of the confluence, fishing the North Fork is often the best option to finding visibility and staging areas for fish that have made their way through the bulk of the obstacles downstream. Clemens Park is a good secondary option to find a spot away from the crowd at the hatchery. The trails at Clemens Park are well kept, but access is limited to a boundary of private Weyerhauser property, and the opposite side of the river is private property occupied by local residents. Several stretches of river between Mill Creek and Clemens Park have been closed in recent years due to a lack of respect for private property. The confluence itself is now part of a stretch of river only accessible through purchasing an annual permit through a local fishing club.

The result of the shrinking accessibility on the Alsea and a traditional broodstock steelhead that's been bred like a hatchery-bound racehorse is a perfect storm for crowded anglers near the hatchery. If you're planning to hit the hatchery stretch, prepare for the crowds you're not likely to encounter downriver. Hate on the crowds all you want, they are fishing the final destination for these fish, so naturally the chances for success are often higher the higher upriver you're fishing, particularly when the water is higher too. If the fish are moving through, you'll know soon enough from your own success, or that of the anglers around you. Stats of fish collected at the trap are also posted in print on the bulletin boards in the hatchery parking lot, which much like magazine articles, is valuable information you won't find on the web.

This article was published in the December 2018 issue of Northwest Sportsman Magazine