Steelhead season closes Monday on Methow River, upper Columbia

Steelhead and coho salmon fishing will close on the Methow River on Monday, ending a fishing season that had been reopened for the first time in nine years.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the closure in an alert this week.

The alert said the allowable incidental take of wild steelhead will either be at or close to its limit by Monday, and that the hook-and-line collection of hatchery broodstock for wild steelhead will begin next month.

Easing fishing pressure is expected to help fishery managers meet the broodstock collection goal.

WDFW opened the Methow River from its mouth at Pateros upstream to the Burma Road bridge last fall after steelhead counts at Priest Rapids Dam met a threshhold that allowed for fishing to be opened. The fish are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The agency also opened the upper Columbia from Beebe Bridge upstream to Brewster.

The goal was to cull hatchery steelhead from the overall population to increase the proportion of wild fish.

Toward that end, WDFW required that anglers keep the hatchery steelhead they caught there. Wild steelhead were required to be released.