Kenyon Trip Report: OP Steelhead

Back on the OP

I’ve been fortunate to spend quite a few weeks on the Olympic Peninsula over the last several years. I made my first trip over here with past shop employee and good friend Kelby Braun back in 2020, and have pretty much been obsessed with the unique rainforest vibe ever since. We ended up with four of us on this year’s trip, with Jesse and I dragging over a raft, along with Chris and Bjorn bringing their boat as well.

We opted for the Sol Duc on our first day, given the likelihood of dropping and clearing conditions over the week ahead. Generally, this river fishes better when flows on others river are high/off-color, and even though we didn’t have any encounters on this day, we fished hard and felt good about the game plan. We did see a couple of fish sliding up through tailouts on this float so there were definitely a few around, but as steelheading goes none of those wanted to play.

Our next day was spent on the lower Hoh River, which ended up being our best day for fishing and weather. Everyone managed to tangle with a steelhead, including Jesse landing his first ever Winter Steelhead. I don’t care where you’re at or what you’re fishing for, when everyone in the crew gets it done on the same day, everything after is just a bonus. We were all even more appreciative of this after the grind of conditions to follow in the coming days.

The next few days greeted us with rain, snow, sleet, really anything and everything that can fall from the sky. Every morning was either snow covered or frozen solid, so our early start motivations were pretty slim. These were true Winter Steelhead conditions. Water temps plummeted daily, rivers got low and clear and we had to grind out every opportunity with long days on the water. Fortunately, a couple of these days warmed up to semi-tolerable temps in the afternoons (at least when I was dressed in every layer I brought with me) and a couple of fish were hooked and landed.

- Kenyon

Photo Credit: Jesse Retan, Chris Matzel, Kenyon Pitts