Does salmon spawning affect the trout fishing in creeks?

naturalmind

naturalmind

Just Hatched
I’m new to fly fishing, so any advice is appreciated!

I spent the weekend fishing two Skagit creeks in the Marblemount, WA area. The creeks were totally filled with spawning pinks - does this spook the trout or otherwise affect trout fishing? I was mostly fishing an October caddis/slush egg dropper rig, as I’ve heard fishing eggs behind redds is the way to go, but I only caught a single rainbow over 2 days. Not even a single eat besides that. I did mix up the rig with different dries and nymphs.

I have to imagine the sheer number of huge salmon has to have some kind of suppressive effect. What is your experience?
 
I've been living in OR for almost a decade now and am admittedly not up on the WA regs... but when I lived up that way, just about any smaller creek that had salmon spawning was closed to fishing throughout the Puget Sound. Are you certain the ones you're fishing are legal to fish? Probably the best place to start.
 
Welcome fellow North Sounder!

As Evan notes, always check the regs for creeks in WA, especially during salmon season. WA regs are extremely complicated and sometimes completely nonsensical.

But, assuming that the water is open, the larger issue you are likely encountering is that there just aren't that many resident rainbows in our ecosystem. Your methods are the standard approach for trout behind spawning salmon, we just don't have a ton of them. The PNW is built around sea run fish and finding "classic" river trout fishing is uncommon anywhere that salmon can reach. Can you find them? Sure. Will you find many? Not all that often in my experience (EDIT: at least in the rivers I fish around here).

That said, I think you will find folks who say that pink years do disrupt things, even if just because of the number of them that tend to show up. I've noticed this when fishing for sea run cutts on various rivers. It's like the cutts get annoyed (seems like the coho do too, when the runs cross over). But others around here have more knowledge around that than I do.
 
Regs aside, I've found that the trout go nuts over egg patterns - especially when fished just downstream of the redds.

(If you do fish during any spawning time, please be very circumspect as to where you walk so you don't damage the redds!)
 
I happened upon this experience yesterday. I wanted to check out a creek that was mentioned to me earlier this summer. Regs stated it was still open so I wanted to get there before the rain and do a little adventuring. To my surprise when I got there it was full of spawning pinks. I tried a few spots away from the spawning areas that felt like would've held trout but there was no action. Moved upstream a bit where there was no salmon and it was still very quiet. Very cool to see all the salmon doing their thing that far from the salt.
 
The creeks I fished are open until October 31 - I don't see any special regulations that add any other restrictions (Fish WA app, statewide pamphlet). There is the default rule that you can't fish for or retain salmon in water that isn't specifically marked open, but I'm careful to avoid the redds and don't do anything to target the spawning salmon.
 
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As others have noted, there are a couple things working against you, first and foremost being small populations of resident trout.

That said, the residents that are in the system are absolutely sitting behind spawning salmon somewhere in that system at this time of year. There is no other food source that is or will be as good as salmon eggs and flesh. But because there are so many spawning pinks and so relatively few trout, you need to find the spawners that are making it particularly easy for the trout to feed behind. They can be picky enough to find just the right rock behind just the right spawners that conveyor belt eggs right into their mouths.

I feel like you're on the right track with your setup and approach, but still need to cover a lot of water to find where trout can maximize that resource. When you find that, you'll likely find bows, cutts and predominantly bulls in relative abundance.
 
Thanks everyone for the insights on population density. I got my fly fishing start this summer in the mountain creeks in Whatcom county, and didn't have much trouble finding what I assume were resident rainbows (though not very big). These Skagit creeks were larger water, so if the populations are small, it makes sense that I was having trouble finding them. I covered a couple miles on each creek, sounds like I'll have to cover more, or just figure out the anadromous fish!
 
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naturalmind said:
Thanks everyone for the insights on population density. I got my fly fishing start this summer in the mountain creeks in Whatcom county, and didn't have much trouble finding what I assume were resident rainbows (though not very big). These Skagit creeks were larger water, so if the populations are small, it makes sense that I was having trouble finding them. I covered a couple miles on each creek, sounds like I'll have to cover more, or just figure out the anadromous fish!
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Do keep in mind that if the mountain creeks you are/were fishing previously are above a barrier to fish passage that stops salmon migration (dam, waterfall, etc) then that changes the game and you can absolutely find some small wild trout.
 
On your next trip out you could try fishing the main river where you will see similar masses of humpies close to shore and in shallow water. There are bull trout, rainbows, and cutts that will also be shallow. Not in high density like others have said, but certainly enough to make the day fun.
 
I would say the contrary- I remember the first year I started river fishing casting a bobber and bead next to spawning pinks looking for a coho (Don't try to reason my noob logic) I ended up catching a very pretty resident bow (Possibly juvenile Steelhead) and could not keep the whitefish off. It was good enough to make me consider searching for this specific event and casting egg patterns with very small hooks to avoid hooking salmon at some point
 
Just speaking from a North Central WA point of view, don't rule out the good old "Whitefish". They love salmon eggs and far out number the trout. I have had fun days catching fish after fish on a hunk of yarn tied egg style on a heavy wire hook underrapped with fake lead. Every once in awhile a residual steelhead would fall to my egg pattern as a bonus.

These days are now over as all the salmon/steelhead streams in my area have been closed for years.
 
Josh said:
Do keep in mind that if the mountain creeks you are/were fishing previously are above a barrier to fish passage that stops salmon migration (dam, waterfall, etc) then that changes the game and you can absolutely find some small wild trout.
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If there’s road access up above, rainbow could well be steelhead that did not migrate down to the river system. I think this is the source of the Cascade River rainbow.
 
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