With No Need For Broodstock, Tokul Opens Early For Steelhead

In an acknowledgement of the end of the line, at least for now, and trying to milk opportunity out of the last real run, WDFW is opening Tokul Creek to winter steelhead fishing starting tomorrow, Friday, November 8.

With last week’s announcement that the early-timed winter steelhead hatchery program on the Snoqualmie tributary is closing, there is no need to collect broodstock for it anymore, so the stream can be opened 22 days earlier than scheduled.

“Additional fishing opportunity targeting hatchery steelhead will help minimize hatchery fish from straying to natural spawning areas and assist in the transition to an integrated broodstock program,” WDFW stated in a fishing rule change notice out this afternoon.

That plan to begin a new program using ESA-listed wild steelhead from the Snoqualmie basin still must be written with the Tulalip Tribes and be approved by federal overseers, a process that could take a number of years to complete, as I detailed last week.

The current segregated program, which uses Chambers Creek-strain fish that originated elsewhere in the Puget Sound basin decades ago, is being shut down due to higher levels of gene flow into the wild steelhead population and triggers in an overarching National Marine Fisheries Service biological opinion that authorized releases.

Once upon a time, Tokul and the nearby Snoqualmie were one of the places in Pugetropolis to start fishing around Thanksgiving for early-returning hatchery brats. To be clear, the good old days are gone, but recent years have seen as many as 545 make it past anglers to the hatchery rack in 2022 and 411 in 2018, but also just 40 in 2021 and 42 in 2017.

Next fall will see a few three-salt steelhead straggle in. The smolts at Tokul Creek Hatchery that would have otherwise gone out next spring will instead be shipped to landlocked lakes.

For more on the situation, WDFW’s regional fisheries manager Edward Eleazer will chat with Fish Hunt Northwest tonight starting at 6 p.m.

In another fishing rule change notice, coho season will also start on the Snoqualmie starting tomorrow. It had been delayed from opening November 1 because of the “risk” of anglers catching the last spawning unmarked Chinook in the river. The overall Snohomish River watershed saw severely curtailed summer and fall salmon and steelhead fisheries due to very low expected king returns, management triggers in a state-tribal management plan and fishing impacts eaten up elsewhere.