Northwest Fishing Reports

As we get into the later months and closer to winter steelhead I was curious if any of the vets would be willing to share locations close to Federal Way that are good areas for Steelhead. By close I mean two hours or so, if there are any. My wife and I have salmon fished but would like to give winter steelhead a try. I’m not asking for any hotspots or your tricks, we will learn that the old fashion way through trial, error, and arguments between the two of us. Being somewhat new to the area I am unsure of areas to go. I will keep doing some searches online but hoping for some help from the community. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

if you go wdfw web site their is lots of good info. Find the hatcheries and fish close to them that is the best way to start.

2 hours opens up a ton of rivers for you. for closest, the green should produce a few. the puyallup I'm told has put out about 6 summer run hatchery fish so far and will have some winter fish. skykomish, snohomish, cowlitz, wynooche, satsop, skookumchuck, chehalis are all within your range.

If you want to do it the old fashion way get off a computer and find your own water to fish.
Other wise any steelhead stream in this state has been blabbed about a million times online already. It's not hard to find steelhead water.

Cut the guy some slack. New to the area, new to the site. Give him the benefit of the doubt and instruct how to do a "search" on the forum.

deege18,
Welcome to WL. Like already mentioned, the Green is probably the closest to you. You can also drive north to the Snoqualmie or Skykomish rivers or travel south down to the Cowlitz. You'll see a search box up at the top right side of the page. You can find a lot of information that's already been posted if you type the names of the rivers and "steelhead" into the search box.
Good luck. Lots of great info out there and plenty of helpful people.

Green around HWY 18 starting in December

newbie as well. what kind of jig, etc would be good for steelhead??

sealegs wrote:newbie as well. what kind of jig, etc would be good for steelhead??

You can't go wrong with , pink,orange and white. In any combination. 1/8 oz is pretty standard for size. But there's nothing like a steelhead strike on a spoon

fear_no_fish wrote:If you want to do it the old fashion way get off a computer and find your own water to fish.
Other wise any steelhead stream in this state has been blabbed about a million times online already. It's not hard to find steelhead water.

BentRod wrote:Cut the guy some slack. New to the area, new to the site. Give him the benefit of the doubt and instruct how to do a "search" on the forum.

deege18,
Welcome to WL. Like already mentioned, the Green is probably the closest to you. You can also drive north to the Snoqualmie or Skykomish rivers or travel south down to the Cowlitz. You'll see a search box up at the top right side of the page. You can find a lot of information that's already been posted if you type the names of the rivers and "steelhead" into the search box.
Good luck. Lots of great info out there and plenty of helpful people.

fear_no_fish wrote:If you want to do it the old fashion way get off a computer and find your own water to fish.
Other wise any steelhead stream in this state has been blabbed about a million times online already. It's not hard to find steelhead water.

Bitter much? You're young, you've never experienced isolation on the river. There are no secrets within 2 hours of Federal way.

That being said -

deege18 wrote:As we get into the later months and closer to winter steelhead I was curious if any of the vets would be willing to share locations close to Federal Way that are good areas for Steelhead. By close I mean two hours or so, if there are any. My wife and I have salmon fished but would like to give winter steelhead a try. I’m not asking for any hotspots or your tricks, we will learn that the old fashion way through trial, error, and arguments between the two of us. Being somewhat new to the area I am unsure of areas to go. I will keep doing some searches online but hoping for some help from the community. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Federal Way puts you on the Green River as a starting point. It has a run, a crappy run, but it usually gets a number of fish back to its various hatchery locations. They're spread out, rather than stacked up at the terminal, so that gives you a lot of river to explore. Fish higher up in the system.

The Puyallup has an even worse run in my experience, I don't fish it for 'em. Somebody may disagree with me.

The Snoqualmie is 40 minutes away, and will have a great winter run, it has been better than the Skykomish lately. I'd definitely make a trip out there, the mouth of tokul Creek is a great place to start.

The Wynoochee is within 2 hours, barely, but it will give you a large number of fish to practice on.

Find the hatcheries and start there. Learn to tie the egg loop, and tie some leaders. Get yourself some bobbers, and jigs in pink, orange, purple and nightmare. Check out the video that Gringo made on his float fishing set up, it's fantastic. Catch yourself a few coho and cure up some eggs. And wait for a month or two and you'll be good to go.

deege18 wrote:As we get into the later months and closer to winter steelhead I was curious if any of the vets would be willing to share locations close to Federal Way that are good areas for Steelhead. By close I mean two hours or so, if there are any. My wife and I have salmon fished but would like to give winter steelhead a try. I’m not asking for any hotspots or your tricks, we will learn that the old fashion way through trial, error, and arguments between the two of us. Being somewhat new to the area I am unsure of areas to go. I will keep doing some searches online but hoping for some help from the community. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I'm not a whole lotta help as last year was my first run at steelhead & I spent it on the green river... Nate is the man & broke it all down for you. (I'll be making notes in my book too. Thanks Nate!) I've had decent luck finding spots by finding the hatcheries then using google maps to find access points close by.
I mostly wanted to chime in to welcome you to the site & apologize for you getting snapped at for no good reason. Don't let it discourage you, there are a ton of great people here willing to help! Welcome!

Thanks for the info guys. We will do some adventuring over the weekend to find some places to go. No worries on the lil guy acting tough on a forum, I kind of expected it.

Thanks again and tight lines to everyone.

I'm pretty sure what I said was not out of line in any way. If your taking that as rude and bitter that is your own problem. I will make sure to put a bunch of these (:cheers: ) to help clear things up in the future.
I will try and retype my first post so it doesn't spray sand in every ones crack.

If you really want to learn it the old fashion way ditch the computer and use some brain power to locate pull offs along the river with access to water. Other wise you can find anything and everything steelhead related already posted online, so you can sit here and wait for some info or you can look it all up a lot faster. Good luck

Lots of good info on both location and technique.
http://www.steelheaduniversity.com/articles_index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

deege18 wrote:Thanks for the info guys. We will do some adventuring over the weekend to find some places to go. No worries on the lil guy acting tough on a forum, I kind of expected it.

Thanks again and tight lines to everyone.

How did anyone act tough?

The guy with the Justin Beiber haircut.