Flow and Fishing

Dennis Dauble discusses the effects of water flow on steelhead fishing. "When we are talking flows, we are talking about the discharge of the river and the seasonality of that and how close trigger steelhead fishing or entry of steelhead into the streams and also how it affects your ability to catch them. You have to fish differently at low flows than you do at high flows. I will talk mostly about the Walla Walla River. Mid-November through February I still like to fish the Blue Mountain streams. What I found is that steelhead respond to flow. We always get an early run of fish with that first high water event in early fall and that can be because of rain or it can be because of an early snow melt but there is a rush of fish that come in and that is when the best fishing is in my experience. Can we get another rush of fish that comes in later in the season but between those periods it is kind of hit and miss."