I would suspect that the fact that we are over three inches below average rainfall for the month of November might have some bearing on it. Sea-run cutthroat fishing in Hood Canal and the South Sound usually holds up pretty well into the winter. The primary spawning month for cutthroat is not until March and, as a rule of thumb, the spawning run in smaller creeks tends to be later than in larger rivers.

 

iagree

I fish Hood Canal all year and find cutthroat all months. March tends to slow down a bit in my experience. Cutthroat, I believe, will also spawn in the smallest of creeks. So it takes some good water levels before they run up, do their thing, and get back to salt before low flows. So I figure the guys that use the small creeks are back in the salt quicker than a larger stream. Think like a fish!

 

Great info, Preston. Plus, from what I have gathered from Les Johnson's wonderful book, Flyfishing Coastal Cutthroat Trout, the timing of searun spawning is quite variable and fish are likely to head in and out of freshwater, especially in small streams. In other words, there are always some searuns around, but numbers may be higher some times of years.

Steve

 

ATB, searuns DO NOT overwinter in the salt.
WT

 

Huh? This is largely true in the North Sound, but many South Sound fish may spend as little as a few weeks in fresh water (get in, do your business and get out). South Sound cutthroat fishing can be decent every month of the year, depending on the area.

 

X3 :thumb:

 

ATB = According to Behnke.
Which is interesting because Robert Behnke who is recognized as THE expert on trout and salmon in North America insists that SRC do not overwinter in the salt while old timers like Steve Raymond and Les Johnson maintain that they do overwinter in the salt. In fact they've been catching them during the winter, in the salt (in particular in the south sound) for years.
And that's interesting because it's a case of those who analyze cold hard scienctific facts clashing with the old timey woodsy wisdom of the practitioners of sport (present company included) who have probably seen more cutthroat than anyone.
Good stuff, I say.

 

As far as overwintering in the salt, that depends on the size of the river. Some will go up very large systems and stay for longer periods of time, but most of our fish in Hood Canal and Puget Sound are not from these large systems. They are from jump across creeks that if you saw them in the summer you would wonder how anything could get up them. The spawning ground sometimes even dries up down near the mouth of the stream, virtually trapping the fry up toward the head of the stream.

As far as spawning cycles, that has also been debated. Since fish can be caught 12 months a year, when is the true cycle and do fish get in and get out asap.

Either way they do not overwinter on most streams.

 

Whether or not cutthroat trout "over-winter" in salt water depends a bit on the definition. Without doubt they are in salt water in the winter months. Records of upstream and downstream migration at the University of Washington's Big Beef Creek station (Hood Canal) by John Wenburg revealed upstream migration as early as October and as late as April but most in January, February and March. There were cutts going downstream (both smolts and older fish) as early as January and as late as May but the great majority were in April. So, there certainly are fish at sea in the winter (as revealed by our catching them). Whether every fish goes back upriver every year is a more tricky question. There is some evidence that some may stay all year in the salt water but this is probably at most rather unusual. In addition, it seems some will go up more than one creek in a season so they may spawn in one creek and then leave to feed elsewhere.
TQ

P.S. It is fine to read books but the fish are always right.

 

I don't think that there is much question that cutthroat do not overwinter in salt water, at least in the sense that they do not spend the entire winter/spring season in the salt. Like many salmonids, cutthroat spawn every year after reaching sexual maturity. Even repeat-spawning steelhead return to spawn each year so long as they continue to survive.

Many of the small streams in the South Sound and Hood Canal with reasonably large populations of anadromous cutthroat provide very limited habitat except during the winter months, not to mention very little in the way of food (and cutthroat, unlike steelhead, do continue to feed in fresh water). The result is that in many, if not most, cases the period of time spent in fresh water is as brief as possible.

This is not completely restricted to small streams, it's just more prevalent there. I've caught bright, fresh-run cutthroat, with sea lice attached, in the Stillaguamish as late as February. At the first Sea-Run Cutthroat Symposium (Reedsport, OR 1995) during a roundtable discussion, Robert Behnke responded to Steve Raymond's suggestion that some cutthroat overwintered in salt water by asking "Where, then, are your 14-pound sea-run cutthroat?"

If you'll read Les' cutthroat book (page 26, Overwintering in Salt Water) I think you'll find that he tries his best to leave the question open. Personally I feel that, if you consider the wide variations in sea-run cutthroat life histories while taking into account the prime physical mandate of reproduction, it becomes easy enough to explain the presence of cutthroat in salt water during the winter months without proposing spending an entire winter in the salt.

 

Just a quick note. I lived in Central Oregon for 10 years, and in that time there were two 9+ pound searun cutthroat caught by summer steelhead fisherman. I believe one came from the N. Santiam and the other from the Mckenzie River. In fact there was an article done in STS magazine about these enormous SRC that had been caught occasionally over the years.
Is it possible that maybe a few SRC fry got hooked up with a bunch of steelhead fry and decided to spend a couple years in the open ocean?

 

Just a quick note. I lived in Central Oregon for 10 years, and in that time there were two 9+ pound searun cutthroat caught by summer steelhead fisherman. I believe one came from the N. Santiam and the other from the Mckenzie River. In fact there was an article done in STS magazine about these enormous SRC that had been caught occasionally over the years.

Confirmed/documented weights, or one of these thumbs up 'it weighs this much' things :thumb:. . . ? Just curious.

 

Those would certainly be remarkably large sea-run cutthroat. In his paper published in the proceedings of the Sea-Run Cutthroat Seminar (1995) mentioned above, Pat Trotter Sea-Run Cutthroat Trout: Life History Profile, says "... these fish seldom live beyond age 7 or 8, nor normally grow much beyond 500 mm in fork length. The oldest sea-run cutthroat trout ever reported was was an age-10 fish from Sand Creek, Oregon (Sumner 1962) and the largest weight of which I am aware is the Washington State hook-and-line record, a 2.274 kg (just a bit over 5 pounds) fish captured in Carr Inlet of Puget Sound in May 1943." The largest sea-run cutthroat that I've personally seen was taken by Les Johnson on the Stillaguamish a few years ago, it was roughly 24/25 (no one had a tape) inches and was estimated at close to five pounds.

 

Just out of curiosity and not knowing that much about the Willamette drainage, I checked Les' book. His information (from ODFW) indicates that sea-run cutthroat don't ascend the Willamette beyond Willamette Falls. So, although there are there are coastal cutthroat in the McKenzie and Santiam there are no sea-runs.

 

I understand that your standard 14" SRC would have no chance at making it over The Willamette Falls, but plenty of adult salmon and steelhead do. My question was "might it be possible for a few SRC fry to get hooked up with some steelhead fry, and end up spending a couple years in the open ocean?". I like to think that just because something hasn't been scientifically proven and written about, doesn't mean it's not possible.

 

I have never said --or written--that coastal cutthroat overwinter in saltwater. Curt Kraemer says that they do not. Steve Raymond is sure that they do. As Preston stated, I allow the question to remain open just a crack since there are no recent studies that either substantiate or reject overwintering. I was in attendance at the Sea-Run Cutthroat Symposium held in Reedsport, Oregon in 1995 when Dr. Behnke made his statement about overwintering cutthroat. He does not believe that they overwinter. Dr. Behnke calls the sea-run cutthroat semi-anadromous. However the fact that sea-run cutthroat have been found 40 miles out in the Pacific in Oregon along Siusilaw River Plume and 100 feet deep seems to somewhat debunk even Dr. Benhke's writings.
The sea-run coastal cutthroat remains an inigma and will continue to be so until we get some proper studies undertaken by the Washinton Department of Fish and Wildlife.
As for my personal conviction on this cutthroat issue, I do not personally subscribe to the theory that they overwinter in saltwater.
Les Johnson

 

I have never said --or written--that coastal cutthroat overwinter in saltwater.

Sorry Les. I based that on a conversation in Patricks a few years back and obviously got some of the details wrong. I don't know one way or the other myself but I appreciate the mystery of it all.
WT

 

As above, according to ODFW, there are no sea-run cutthroat above Willamette Falls, so no sea-run cutthroat in the Santiam or McKenzie. In fact, those would be remarkably (impossibly?) large resident coastal cutthroat in any river.

 

But, Preston, if it were printed in the STS, it HAS to be accurate . . .

 

With most of our anadromous fish and especially so with our sea-run cutthroat and bull trout using words like always and never in discussing their behavior should be used with extreme caution.

I think it is pretty clear that on the larger North Sound rivers virtually all the cutts over-winter in freshwater. The discussion gets more interesting in places like south Sound where the fish use those smaller independent tribs. Anyone that spends much time in the fishery will attest that there are fish to caught all winter long in the salt. However that doesn't mean that all the fish are there all winter. Clearly those that are maturing will leave the salt to spawn sometime between December and May. That leaves only those sub-adult fish are not oblgated to return to freshwater during that first winter.

I think it is a fair statement that on the whole western Washington sea-run cuttrhoat do not over-winter in salt water. That said it is also probable that at least some of those sub-adult fish in the south sound spend the winter in the salt. Those contrary are the exceptions that prove the rule and once again demostrate the willingness of our beloved fish to resist being placed in those nice neat boxes we like to put things into. I for one am thankful for that and like a little mystery in my fish.

Tight lines
Curt

 

From what I can glean from all the experts, the only thing they all agree on is that there is still a lot we don't understand about SRC spawning and travel habits.

Two summers ago, I made a very small contribution to a study conducted by some TESC fishery biology graduate students. I was fishing off Squaxin Island in September, when I was approached by a couple of young men in a boat with a RESEARCH sign on it. They offered me a bucket and asked me to bring any trout I caught to a pair of biologists who had a lab set up on Hope Is., where they would implant transponders, then release the fish right back where they had been caught. The objective was to study the range of the fish in the south sound.

As luck would have it, the tide ran perfectly, so I was able to bring them a half dozen fish over the next hour, ranging in size from 18" up to a couple of big SRC's. I even got to watch them perform the surgeries, and it was pretty fascinating.

About six months later, one of the guys came into Fishy Business, and recognized me from their field day. He said they had recorded one of the transponders passing by a receiver located near Pt Townsend on it's way out into the strait. Now, no one said that the same fish swam out to sea, only that the chip had been recorded in the area. It could have been in a seal, or boat or a sea monster for that matter, but, these were big heavy trout, physically capable of the journey.

I don't try to infer anything from this, but it just shows that there is a lot to learn about this specie, with a lot of weird anomalies in the data, so it's hard to decide what to believe. I take my sea runs with a grain of salt.

 

We are very grateful to you for your help. The student from Evergreen (Sarah) finished her degree but Fred Goetz is a PhD student working with me at the UW. More cutts were tagged this Sept. in the south sound and we have been tagging and tracking cutts in Hood Canal from Big Beef Creek in 2006 and 2007. Fred had already done a lot of bull trout tracking before coming to grad school and we are also tracking steelhead smolts from various rivers (with assistance and financial help from anglers' groups, state, federal govt., tribes, etc.) and blackmouth.

In the future we will be happy to provide many details on the movements of these salmonid species that the tracking reveals. The collaboration among many groups doing this work is gratifying and you can expect a lot of good information soon.
TQ
TQ

 

This is a great thread! Thanks to all you knowledgeable folks!!