Queets open to Steelhead fishing until end of March 2025?

S

srickaby99

Smolt
I'm new to WA and was planning on heading to the Olympic Peninsula in March to try my luck.
I wanted to double check on the status of the Queets inside the park based on reading what I believe are all the relevant sites.
Back in December the WDFW site announced the Queets would close Dec 16.
There's WDFW January update now referring back to the Olympic National Park fishing page. Looks like I'm all good through the end of March.

I just wanted to get confirmation I'm reading all this correctly.

Secondary question. Since the Queets is inside the park why was the WDFW announcing a closure for the Queets? I presume they set the recommendation and the park would follow their guidance?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
It is confusing. I also first heard that WDFW closed the Queets Dec. 16, but then, like you, I noticed that the NPS regs showed it both closed at the top of the listing and open until March 31 further down. A friend called the NPS and spoke to a ranger. The closure reg at the top, printed in red, supersedes the standard regs further down which are all printed in black. Talk about confusion, like almost a deliberate set up for innocent fisherfolk like me. It's a frickin' website. You'd think they could make a few keystrokes and delete the part of the standard regs that are not applicable this year, or for the past four years even! So . . . fish it at your own risk. And they do patrol it regularly or I would have already been there.
 
The ONP regulations table (the one that is apparently making people think it's open) hasn't changed in years. Think of that as the "best case scenario" rules. Always check the emergency alerts at the top of the page for closure notices before heading out. As @Salmo_g said, red text always supersedes black text, until said red text is rescinded.

To clarify (or further muddy) another point, WDFW announces emergency closures in the National Park, but they don't manage the Queets fisheries, so they always refer rec anglers to the ONP regulations in the rules pamphet. The QIN is more or less solely responsible for determining whether and when non-tribal folks can fish the Queets. Given that only a small portion of the river is on reservation land, I don't understand why they have so much say over how we manage the rest of the river, which is national park, but I think the way it breaks down most of the time is that the Feds (Park Service) are very reluctant to propose rules that may somehow violate treaty rights or run afoul of conservation goals. It's a bummer for sure, but I doubt we'll ever fish the Queets again in the late winter/spring without a tribal guide.

If you're after a sort of similar experience, the Middle Quinault (managed by WDFW) is open through March. I've never been able to figure that river out, but the surroundings are similar to a day on the Queets, and it definitely gets some wild fish, so it's worth a shot.
 
Thanks! I'd missed the red line at the top of the ONP regs and just read the part down below. Glad I'd asked as I would have been in the clarts for sure! Totally agree with the comments... just update the entire page with the current state of play... would remove any confusion.

I'll check out the middle Quinault as an option also. I'm traveling from Federal Way to Forks and thought that on the way over I could go the "long way" and stop off on the Queets for the day.

I'll save my questions regarding confusion on Salmon identification for another day... :-) Still learning!
 
The Queets is my favorite river. If you get a chance to fish it in the park do so (legally). It's amazing even if you don't hook a fish. My favorite Queets memory is fishing a run when a huge herd of Roosevelt Elk crossed the river about 100 yards upstream of me. A thunder of sound shortly followed by sight of thousands of brown poop pellets gently floating down stream. It put me in my place.

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Skagittarius said:
The Queets is my favorite river. If you get a chance to fish it in the park do so (legally). It's amazing even if you don't hook a fish. My favorite Queets memory is fishing a run when a huge herd of Roosevelt Elk crossed the river about 100 yards upstream of me. A thunder of sound shortly followed by sight of thousands of brown poop pellets gently floating down stream. It put me in my place.

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So many elk... and everything else. No cell service. Probably looks about like it did 500 years ago. Too bad it doesn't have the fish it used to, but it is (was?) an amazing place to stand in the water, take it all in, and just maybe catch and release a beautiful, wild steelhead in the spring. Hope we get to experience that again. Summer's great there, too, but the fishing (and the floating!) can be challenging at low water. Find shade and find whatever fish are around....
 
Back in the day:
Queets Basin, over the Jeffers Glacier then all the way out.
Skyline, Queets, Valhalla’s.
Skyline, Queets, Hoh.
You could roam all over that country. Wherever you might want to go the elk have been going for millennia
The Queets is the heart of what’s left of true wilderness in the lower 48
 
I forded the queets with my son and camped several miles upstream at Spruce Bottom in August 2021. Found some cutts but no steelhead or bull trout. It never rains in August - wrong. It started raining hard and we nearly didn't make it back across the river. The hardest wade of my life was recrossing a rising queets with a full pack. We unfastened our waste-belts so we could drop our packs if we fell. My legs still shake thinking of it...
image000000.jpg

In Wild Steelhead Sean Gallagher tells about at trip where the upper Queets went from 2,000 cfs to 74,000 cfs in one 24 hour period due to heavy rains. This is one river where the weather report matters immensely.
 
Hello OP. This is my home water. The nps regulatesv the river inside the Park which is essentially for simplicity above the salmon river confluence. There's a few items to consider being this is park territory on the majority of the river. One, there isn't always agreement between the regulation areas. Two, with the park employee layoffs you can guarantee they will close the gates and thus the river. I would honestly be shocked with all things going right that they allow the river to remain open in March. At any rate the message is get current information right up to your trip date and good luck. The river is well setup for swinging and honestly it's in my opinion more effective as you cover more water than dangling nymph's. The water can have lots of color so larger patterns in bright pink and darker purple and black work well. Don't be choosey on fly choice and don't fish too heavy of a tip. Do cover water quickly. In March the water is warming up and the fish will move. Don't over think it, just fish lots of likely water and don't neglect the bottom of the run onto the tail out. If you aren't fishing a heavy tip this is no issue. If you are you will move on prematurely. The river in general isn't deep where you want to fish. Good luck and check the regs on the park website.
 
Dave Westburg said:
I forded the queets with my son and camped several miles upstream at Spruce Bottom in August 2021. Found some cutts but no steelhead or bull trout. It never rains in August - wrong. It started raining hard and we nearly didn't make it back across the river. The hardest wade of my life was recrossing a rising queets with a full pack. We unfastened our waste-belts so we could drop our packs if we fell. My legs still shake thinking of it...
View attachment 142386

In Wild Steelhead Sean Gallagher tells about at trip where the upper Queets went from 2,000 cfs to 74,000 cfs in one 24 hour period due to heavy rains. This is one river where the weather report matters immensely.
Click to expand...
Just one of the many ways the Queets challenges (endangers?) its enthusiasts. That crossing is a huffer at low flows, and it seems like you can spit in the river and blow it out, so even a moderate rain should get your attention if hiking the upper basin.

I feel more "alive" and frankly humbled on the Queets than anywhere I've ever been. It's truly magnificent. Here's hoping the ranger doesn't get fired, so we can at least keep going there to enjoy it, even if we can't always fish.
 
Getting WDFW/NPS and the QIN on the same page regarding escapement and steelhead fishing the Queets shouldn't be the immovable object that it appears to be. What lever needs to be pulled here? WTF!
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Shad said:
Just one of the many ways the Queets challenges (endangers?) its enthusiasts. That crossing is a huffer at low flows, and it seems like you can spit in the river and blow it out, so even a moderate rain should get your attention if hiking the upper basin.

I feel more "alive" and frankly humbled on the Queets than anywhere I've ever been. It's truly magnificent. Here's hoping the ranger doesn't get fired, so we can at least keep going there to enjoy it, even if we can't always fish.
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They will close the gates regardless in my opinion. The park has long used access denial as a flex there. I was forced to put a boat back on a trailer and exit the park during the Obama era shutdown. Yet there was a ranger there to escort me out of the park. While the park system in it's inception is a godsend for conservation and preservation it's been perverted into a liability scared theme park. I don't like it and I'm not alone.
 
We backpacked on the upper Queets a few times as a kid. What a special place.

One very distinct memory I have from that period was a trip with my old man and my cousin. I had to have been 14ish. We did a 10 day trip and one of the spots we camped was very near this deep, slow moving hole. The river kinda plunged in and where the ground was flat and rocky then as the water slowed and deepened there was large, almost cliff like rocks on our side of the river. That hole was just loaded with steelhead.

We spent maybe 3 days camped there. All day long my cousin and I would sit on those rocks and try to catch those steelhead in the hot August sun. We tried everything we could think of, but those fish would just laugh at us. As would my old man. He'd spend his day relaxing in camp, whittling, reading, hiking etc. Then each evening near dusk, he'd stand up, grab his spinning rod, walk down to the river, and typically within 20 minutes land a fish or three. Then he'd chuckle, reel in his little spinner, and head back to camp.

My cousin and I were always in disbelief. I'd like to say we learned a valuable lesson in patience, but we simply continued to waste our daytime casting at those fish in the bright sun, never understanding why we couldn't catch the damn things
 
Fond memories for me as well. Hiked in 6 miles from the upper campground to Tshletshy Creek and caught my first Steelhead on the fly in the run below it, a fat little summerrun hen that grabbed my muddler. It's been over 40 years ago since that day and I've been lucky to create many more memories on that river since. Agree with others, one of my favorite places on the planet. It still feels 'wild' with it's old
growth trees and lack of roads.
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Dave Westburg said:
I forded the queets with my son and camped several miles upstream at Spruce Bottom in August 2021. Found some cutts but no steelhead or bull trout. It never rains in August - wrong. It started raining hard and we nearly didn't make it back across the river. The hardest wade of my life was recrossing a rising queets with a full pack. We unfastened our waste-belts so we could drop our packs if we fell. My legs still shake thinking of it...
View attachment 142386

In Wild Steelhead Sean Gallagher tells about at trip where the upper Queets went from 2,000 cfs to 74,000 cfs in one 24 hour period due to heavy rains. This is one river where the weather report matters immensely.
Click to expand...
Years ago when I first started fishing the Queets, the old-timer shuttle guy I used that lived in Clearwater would always remind me of mercurial nature of the river. He described it perfectly - "it's like a yo-yo!". I never forgot that whenever I was on the Queets. I don't think I ever fished a river who's flows changed more dramatically that wasn't dam influenced. Opposite of the soup bowl that is the Sol Duc.
 
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