Gurling, Mike. National Park Service, Mount Meany (right) and Mount Olympus, Olympic National Park, September, 1990.

Next Thursday we go to the Olympic Peninsula for steelhead. The Olympic Mountains cut through the center of the Peninsula, and their name evolved from the highest peak, 7,980 feet, which was dubbed Mount Olympus in 1778 by English captain John Meares. He thought the peak looked godly, or at least Greek. The name Olympus not only stuck, it spread to the mountain range and finally to the Peninsula.

It must have been a sunny day when Captain Meares saw Mount Olympus, because he actually saw it. Here’s next week’s forecast for Quinault, Washington, where we’ll stay. Quinault is on the rainy west side of the mountains.

Snow, sun, snow, rain, rain, rain, rain, sun, rain. There’s not a lot of promise for visibility. We will fish Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, but I’m thinking we should take the day off Sunday to sunbathe. The mountains create a rain shadow on the northeast side of the peninsula, so parts of the Peninsula have as little as 15 inches of rain a year, but we fish in the wet west. You’ve heard Seattle is wet and rainy? Well this is from whence those rumors arise. Drip, drip, drip.

At Quinault it rains 189.7 days per year, and winter when the steelhead come is the wettest season. The Quinault Steelheads could never actually complete a 162-game baseball season without a domed stadium. At Quinault average annual rainfall is 122 inches, 10 feet of rain each year, compared to a US average of 38 inches, plus there’s another 7 inches of snow. The average monthly winter rainfall for the Hoh Rainforest valley is 18.33 inches. The average annual rainfall for Lubbock, Texas, is 19.18 inches. I’m betting the Hoh Rainforest doesn’t look much like Lubbock.

Fog on the west side of the peninsula adds up to 30 additional inches of moisture to the rainforests each year. No wonder vampires love it.

Winter steelhead season, wild steelhead season, begins in February and ends in April. I’ve fished for steelhead once before, last year in Oregon, but those were summer steelhead, and winter steelhead are a different kettle of fish. Steelhead are ocean-dwelling rainbow trout that, like salmon, come back to their natal river to spawn, and they are often considered a species of Pacific salmon, but they’re genetically the same as rainbow trout which stay in freshwater snd are not considered a species of Pacific salmon. It gets confusing.

Anadromous. Steelhead (like resident rainbows) hatch in the spring or early summer and then (unlike resident rainbows) work their way to the ocean. The resident rainbow might reach five pounds (which would be huge). The ocean-dwelling steelhead, feeding on ocean shrimp and baitfish, might reach 20 pounds or more. After two or three years of growing, steelhead get notions for some hanky-panky and go back home. 

But going home can be early or late, depending on the steelhead’s genetics. Summer (and fall) steelhead come into the rivers before they are sexually mature. The early arrival is probably a reproduction strategy that gives summer steelhead time to move further inland. They may swim upriver a thousand miles or more. Winter steelhead on the other hand come into the rivers already hot and bothered, have their liaisons closer to saltwater and then, if they’re lucky, return to the ocean. Unlike the other Pacific salmon, steelhead can survive the spawn and return to spawn again next season. They don’t usually, maybe 10 percent or so return from a prior season, but they can. The rest of the Pacific salmon never swim back. They die.

Because winter steelhead are mature when they enter the river, they are much larger than summer steelhead. We had two spey rods for summer steelhead, a 6 wt. and a 7 wt. In our gear list for next week we were told to bring 8 and 9 wts. We’ll take a 7 and and the new 8 (don’t tell Kris), and otherwise use the outfitter’s rods. We’ll leave the 6 at home.

We were also told to bring both regular and dual or triple density Skagit lines, with a wide variety of sinking tips. Floating Skandi lines weren’t on the list. Apparently we need to get our flies down deep.

I hope your eyes are starting to glaze over. Spey rods. Weights. Skagit and Skandi heads. Tips. It’s not really important, except that the bigger the weight of the rod, the bigger the fish it can handle, and the bigger the fly it can throw. Spey rods are long two-handed rods designed to cast to salmon and steelhead. Skandi heads (named for Scandinavia) float on top of the water. Skagit heads (named for Skagitavia) usually also float, but they’re short and heavy, and are designed to throw sinking tips and bigger flies. There. I’ve explained everything, right? Of course I could also be wrong. I’m from Houston. What do I know about all this stuff?

So I emailed Jason Osborne at The Portland Flyshop. Jason has helped me before more than once, and had suggested The Evening Hatch as our outfitter on the Olympic Peninsula. He called me to sort out my confusion, and then told me I was going to the most beautiful place on the planet.

“You will see every shade of green,” he said, “and the Queets is the perfect river when it’s on. It’s wadeable, and easy to read, and the water is beautiful.” It was pretty exciting, but I could have told Jason that if in mid-August he’d go to Lubbock, Texas, he could probably see every shade of brown.

The Queets isn’t the only river on the Olympic Peninsula to fish for winter steelhead. From what I can make out there’s also the Sol Duc, Calawah, Hoh, Bogachiel, and Quinault. The Peninsula is home to a spider web of rivers running to all points of the compass from the central mountains. Some are fed by the (disappearing) Olympic Mountain glaciers, some by springs. This week though, they’re all fed by rain. Western Washington, including the Peninsula, has received as much as 9 inches of rain in a day in the high mountains, and along with landslide warnings the rivers are in flood.

Jack Mitchell at The Evening Hatch says that everything’s blown out but that we should hit things about right. If we do it will be the first time, but on the flip side I’m happy with just about anything short of a landslide. As long as I’m not drowning in mud I can spend my time hanging out and working on Bach on the guitar. I am happy to see that after reaching 22. 5 feet the Queets is moving in the other direction. Ideal flow for fishing the Queets is probably something less than 4,000 cfs. The current 20,000 cfs is probably still just a wee bit high, even if it’s better than the 70,000 cfs it was running this time yesterday. That’s blown out.

Meanwhile I’ve been tying flies. A winter steelhead’s digestive system shuts off when it comes back to freshwater, so even if it does take a fly it’s not feeding. The notion is to tie a fly that triggers something: curiosity, anger, habit, and then keep your fingers crossed.

This is clearly hubris on my part: I’ve got no notion of what flies might be useful or worthwhile in winter in Western Washington. I tied fish tacos last time, and caught my steelhead on the fish taco I tied from the ostrich feather the guy in drag gave me at the Houston Pride Parade. This time I’m tying bunny leaches in various attractive color combinations and weights: pink/orange, pink/purple, black/pink, blue/orange. They’re not much like anything I’ve tied before. For all I know they may not be like anything anyone else has tied either, though I’d like to think there are people catching steelhead with them all over steelhead country. In any case, I’m taking that Pride Parade fly with me.

But the good news is that it probably doesn’t much matter. To fish steelhead you stand in the river and cast and cast and cast and then cast a thousand times more and maybe get a strike. Maybe. I haven’t caught any fish so far this year, to be honest I haven’t fished much, and like as not I’ll keep my streak going. There’s always Bach.