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Feature Story Summer steelheading -- in winter By MARK FREEMAN CENTRAL POINT -- Steve Weeks battled every frosty element late December can muster along the banks of the upper Rogue River, all to take part Tuesday in one of angling's more peculiar misnomers. Weeks scraped the ice off his pickup windshield, drove down snow-packed roads and across a gravel bar laden with white drifts to fish for ... summer steelhead. It's hard to imagine that the same Rogue steelhead anglers stalk in July while wearing T-shirts and sunscreen can be caught in the the same river, with the same baits, during this week's white Christmas. But there, in virgin snow, Weeks displayed a freshly caught summer steelhead plucked Tuesday from the upper Rogue with hook and line. "It's pretty bizarre, when you think about it," says Weeks, a Central Point landscaper. "You look at how the water freezes on the rocks, and you (think) it's pretty weird, being out here, in the snow, getting summer steelhead." But don't let the seasonable name fool you. The summer steelhead run is still in full swing in early winter on the upper Rogue, where storm fronts and Arctic air have left snow and ice in their climatological wake. Actually, summer steelhead will be migrating into the upper Rogue toward spawning tributaries well into January. These late swimmers will join their steelhead cousins that reached the upper Rogue in July. Together, they comprise the Rogue's summer steelhead run -- no matter that the late-comers arrive after the winter solstice. "Since they started migrating in the summer, they got tagged as summer steelhead," says Mike Evenson, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife who has studied Rogue summer steelhead for more than 25 years. "But, biologically, the fish here in January are still summer fish," Evenson says. And this year, fishing is perhaps better now than it was in September. More summer steelhead are now present in the upper Rogue, where water conditions are ripe for late-season fishing with bait and lures. The fishing Weeks and others are experiencing is boosted, in part, by 1,100 hatchery fish "recycled" for anglers Dec. 17. The excess hatchery fish were trucked downstream from Cole Rivers Hatchery and returned to the Rogue for anglers to catch. The excess hatchery fish, plus the late-arriving wild and hatchery fish, have created good summer steelheading in the dead of winter. Matt Debrick of Central Point picked Saturday's frigid air and snow for his introduction to summer steelhead. He joined two friends on a driftboat trip along the upper Rogue, and the trio hooked 14 fish. "It was a blast," says Debrick, 20. "Once we started hitting fish, we didn't even realize it was cold. "And, man, it was definitely cold," he says. The excess fish can be caught with worms, roe or plug lures. Fly-fishing is difficult because the water, at 44 degrees, is far less than the optimum mid-50s fly-fishing temperatures. Summer steelhead are a unique fish in Oregon, and the Rogue's strain even stands out among them. Most coastal rivers sport just runs of winter steelhead, which head in from the sea December through March to spawn in gravelly creeks. The Rogue has a winter steelhead run. But it is one of the few rivers that also sport summer-run steelhead. The Rogue's summer steelhead first enter the river early as 12-inch "halfpounder" fish, named because they weigh roughly 8 ounces apiece. The following year, they return as first-time spawning adults. The summer steelhead typically first cross Gold Ray Dam and hit the upper Rogue in early July. These fish hang out in the upper Rogue until December, when they begin heading into spawning tributaries. But summer steelhead continue to trickle into the Rogue through January, Evenson says. The run is arbitrarily declared over Dec. 31, however, with the January fish declared winter steelhead -- even though some winter steelhead hit the upper Rogue in December, and some summer steelhead don't come until January. As the former biologist at Cole Rivers Hatchery, Evenson did spawning studies that showed no difference in spawning time or migration time between summer steelhead that enter the hatchery in July and those that enter in December, Evenson says. "They are not clearly separate runs of summer fish," Evenson says. "So, you can basically treat them as one population." But some in the angling population don't worry about differentiating the steelhead of July and the steelhead of December -- especially when the rare snow falls on the Rogue Valley floor. Weeks says he will continue to scrape ice off his windshield and drive through the snow and ice to fish for these summer steelhead -- and not worry about how strange the name sounds. "As long as we get fish in the river," Weeks says, "we're doing all right." Run is down, still above average This year's summer steelhead run in the upper Rogue is down from previous years, but the low run totals mask some good news for wild steelhead. Despite an adult steelhead run of fewer than 6,000 fish over Gold Ray Dam, this year's summer steelhead run is actually better than average for most of the 1990s. Through November, special video cameras installed at the Gold Ray Dam fish-ladder recorded 2,506 wild summer steelhead -- a hair over the 2,275 wild steelhead averaged since 1992. The data goes back to '92 because that was the first year in which state biologists believe all the upper Rogue's hatchery summer steelhead had clipped adipose fins to differentiate them from the unclipped wild fish. In fact, this year's wild steelhead count is better than the 1993 return, in which the total run numbered over 10,500 fish. This year's summer steelhead count through mid-December at the dam is 5,765 adults -- with more than 40 percent wild fish. "You would look at the overall numbers (for '98) and think, gee, it's hurting for wild fish," says Mike Evenson, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist for the Rogue District. "But if you look at runs going back to '92, we're right there in the ballpark." Past years have seen the hatchery fish comprise 60-70 percent of the run. Possible reasons for the difference this year, Evenson says, is better wild fish production in improved wild fish spawning habitat; poor ocean conditions have hit hatchery fish harder than the wild ones; or a combination of the two. Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � interRogue & The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA