Clearwater Steelhead Season Set

Anglers should get a chance to bring home a Clearwater River steelhead starting Jan. 1.

The Idaho Fish and Game ommission has tentatively set a spring steelhead season on the Clearwater River and dropped catch and release requirements imposed this fall to protect the weak returns of steelhead to the Clearwater river.

In other action Friday, the commission retained nonresident deer and elk tag quotas for the 1996 hunting season.

The steelhead season on the Clearwater is contingent on approval from the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. It would run from Jan. 1 through April 30, with limits of two of the sea-run rainbow trout a day and four for the season.

The mew regulation, adopted at the year’s final meeting that wrapped up on Friday, will lift the catch-and-release restrictions put in place on the Clearwater earlier this year after biologists warned the run would be very small.

Anglers will also be allowed to keep steelhead 30 inches or longer caught on the Snake River from the Idaho-Washington border upstream.

“I think it’s great they’re doing this,” said Emma Jean Kestner, who operates the Riverside Sport Shop in Orofino. “It’ll help the town.”