Just Over 7,000 Skagit-Sauk Wild Winter Steelhead Expected Back

“One of the best forecasts” for Skagit-Sauk wild winter steelhead of recent years is out and state and tribal fishery managers are expected to announce rules and regulations for this season soon.

Some 7,019 of the famed fish are predicted to return to the North Cascades rivers, according to WDFW, a figure that is just about how many actually came back last year (7,307), a run that beat preseason expectations by nearly 2,100 steelhead.

The early hope will be that this season also overperforms, but it won’t be known for many months whether that’s the case or not.

While officials at WDFW and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Upper Skagit Indian Tribe and Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe must all still agree to and sign a fishery plan for 2025, from this vantage point, the season, which could begin as early as February 1, does look promising.

State catch-and-release and tribal harvest opportunities here are governed under stepped thresholds outlined in 2023’s federally approved 10-year management plan for the Endangered Species Act-listed stock. This year’s forecast falls into a runsize range that provides for an allowable impact of 20 percent, the second highest level and one step above the 10 percent rate that was used for 2024’s fishery – which allowed for five-day-a-week fishing – as well as 2023’s, when 5,211 were forecast.

“It’s very exciting to see the winter wild steelhead run on the Skagit system starting to rebound!” says guide Luis San Diego, owner of Pugetropolis Sportfishing. “I look forward to this fishery every year, especially moving in the direction that I have with my business, focusing on the aggression bite with Spey fishing and hardware spoon tactics.”

Other anglers like to drift fish with big pink worms, float jigs or plug the rivers. There are multiple boat ramps on both, as well as walk-in access off of local roads.

There have also been Skagit-Sauk fisheries in 2021 (forecast: 4,297; actual return: 3,578), 2019 (6,567; 4,636) and 2018 (5,247; 6,199), but 2020’s and 2022’s forecasts (3,963 and 3,833; actual: 3,092 and 5,805) fell below the minimum 4,001-fish mark needed to hold even a very conservative season.

After winter-spring steelheading closed on the big glacial rivers in the late 2000s due to low runs and 2007’s ESA listing, an enormous effort went into reopening them, including rallies held on the banks of Howard Miller Steelhead Park near their confluence, lobbying the Fish and Wildlife Commission, getting WDFW and local tribes to write a management plan, and then having the feds sign off on holding fisheries over the stock, first under a five-year plan and now with the 10-year one.

Natural-origin steelhead spawner abundance in the Skagit system between 1978 and 2022 ranged from a high of 13,194 in 1988 to a low of 2,502 in 2009, with a mean of 6,282 over that period.

Hatchery winter steelhead releases were ended in the Skagit in 2014 by a lawsuit settlement, a time that corresponded with a bump in wild steelhead returns into the 8,000- to 9,000-fish range.