Chehalis, Puget Sound, Willapa Bay Closed in 2020. How Much Longer Do We Have the Rivers of the Olympic Peninsula?
There’s no doubt about it: this Washington winter steelhead season was as challenging as any in memory. It followed historic low summer steelhead runs that constrained fisheries on the Columbia River system. Poor fall coho and early winter hatchery steelhead returns closed out 2019 with a reminder of the deficiencies of Washington’s longtime Chambers Creek hatchery program. Run projections for the new year indicated a season of few wild winter steelhead returning. Early 2020 kicked off with a near absence of broodstock steelhead in fisheries such as the Queets and Wynoochee, usually bustling with fish and anglers around the New Year’s Holiday. These grim numbers were followed by high water during much of January, cancelling and postponing many trips. Just as wild steelhead started to show in February, WDFW managers announced the closure of the Chehalis and its tributaries due to low returns of wild fish. Closure of the Willapa Bay system soon followed.
The Skagit and Sauk Rivers, after partially re-opening in 2018 with just one full season in 2019, was closed again due to low projected returns, failing to meet the required thresholds of the fisheries management plan. Elsewhere in Puget Sound, it has been twenty years since many of the other famous rivers have been able to sustain a wild steelhead C&R season.
After the closures on the Chehalis, Willapa and Skagit, the OP and Southwest Washington remained open. Displaced anglers crowded onto the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula. The Hoh, Bogachiel, Queets and Sol Duc, among others, have grown busier and busier each year, and this year saw large numbers of boats and anglers from throughout the region and out of state travel to fish these classic watersheds. If you were fishing out on the OP this year, the odds are you weren’t alone very often. A few fish continued to trickle in and anxiety remained high among the steelhead angling community.
Finally, the season ended abruptly in March as efforts to slow the spread of Coronavirus led to a temporary ban on angling statewide. Even before then, Washington steelheaders saw a reduced number of opportunities to fish as their favorite watersheds closed and rivers across Western Washington saw wild winter steelhead runs at near historic lows.