Early Summer Steelhead Run Encouraging...

With a dismal Spring Chinook season ready to come to an end, the early return of Rogue River Summer Steelhead has anglers brimming with hope.

With over 4000 steelhead over Gold Rey Dam, (as of July 21st) angling for what many consider the crown jewel of Rogue River fish, has been consistent, if not downright HOT!!

Reports of ten pound(or better) fish have been coming in,and these fish are aggressive and seem to be taking both bait and flies. As an extra bonus, with the lack of salmon fishermen lining the banks of the Rogue, the ultimate fishing experience is downright pleasant.

I spent a day last week floating the upper Rogue and between our six fishermen we boated over 150 fish.The bulk of them were trout and half pounders, but our boat landed four steelhead over six pounds, with the largest a nice wild 30 inch beauty that had us doing a Chinese fire drill as we chased it down river. For those of you familiar with the summer run of steelhead on the Rogue, you know that fish much over 24 or 25 inches in July are pretty rare. So, to say that this early return of steelhead is encouraging, is quite the understatement. Just for good measure we hooked --but unfortunately lost- a couple of Spring Chinook that kept us busy for twenty minutes while we tried to land them on eight pound test.

We were also lucky enough to get a cool cloud covering that kept us from suffering in the predicted 106 degree temperatures that had been forecast for that day.

So, for those of you that are depressed over the poor return of salmon this year on the Rogue River, you can get out your flyfishing gear, light tackle, and Tevas and start fishing for Summer Steelhead.