North Fork Nehalem Winter Steelhead Report

January 10, 2012

The last 8 days has been very busy for Water Time Outfitters. Each day we’ve been working the emerald green waters of the NF Nehalem River. We fished our hearts out, enjoyed exciting whitewater rafting and then relaxed in the warm cabin each night right on the water. This week the stars have aligned, prayers have been answered and a few lucky anglers have been winning the “steelhead lotto”. In other words fishing has been epic!

The river started out being muddy and high- 83″ the week before. By Sunday the water was down around 56″ and dropping. It was high but a nice green color. Monday the river was very busy with the New Years holiday crowd. Water level was around 50″. Through the week we had levels from 44-50″ with showers, clouds and rain. The sun even made an appearance on Sunday a week later when the water temp was at 44 degrees.

With the water high, dropping, clearing and warm combined with a lack of rain earlier in the month of December we had a pile of fish swimming by each day. The hatchery trap was full and you could see hundreds of steelhead which came into the trap the first few days of the year.

Fighting a chrome bright steelhead is a great way to start the year and this trip some of our begining anglers even got to tire their arms wrestling fish. A highlight for us was our group from Arizona with 7 year old Xeng landing 2 chrome steelhead. This kid was a “black belt” steelhead angler under 4′ tall! The other fantastic thing we saw this week was a lot of wild fish being caught. That bodes well for our wild run which is strongest in Feb/Mar.

Here are a few pics of our fishing from the week. Special thanks to all our great customers who joined us on the NF.

If you’d like to see your face in a picture similar to the ones below call Rob or Gil at Water Time Outfitters. watertimeoutfitters.com 503-704-6449