10-17 SS Pecking Order

Josh Mills tells us that there is a fish hierarchy this time of year. I talked to him last week. "if you are paying attention to the fall runs of fish coming up the Columbia River system right now, you probably have heard about the all-time record fall Chinook run. As of a couple of days ago, they broke 1 million fish over Bonneville dam. They have had days of over 60,000 fish passing the dam. In relation to what it does to steelhead fishing, it changes where the steelhead tend to lie. In the hierarchy and pecking order of a stream, the Chinook is the Alpha kid. They take the choice lies first. So sometimes when you are not finding steelhead and only salmon or you're not getting your traditional steelhead takes, if you're swinging a tight line or you are nymphing, you're only getting Chinook but you are looking for steelhead, look for a secondary lie or water you normally wouldn't fish because the steelhead get pushed out, muscled around, and taken to different spots in the river because the Chinook just say nope, this is our ground. If you have your favorite two or three runs that just are not producing, go find one that you have thought about for a while. That is where I bet the steelhead have moved over to is when the Chinook move up into the father tributaries, these summer run fish are in a holding pattern until spawning time in the spring, you'll find steelhead in their normal places but for right now try looking for secondary lies.