Hoh River:
A beloved jewel. A must fish when fish-able. As soon as you start the drive through the rain forest, you know you’ve entered a special place. With the ever present Elk herd alongside the road and the long flowing moss canopies, one gets the feeling of a relatively unchanged wilderness. The Hoh has the longest boat able selective fishery section, of all the rivers I fish on the Olympic Peninsula. It even has a small “fly fish only section” in the park region. I cannot say enough about this system, and I suppose it is really the fish that make it great. It is possible to catch chrome bright 20lb steelhead here as early as December and right through the season till closing. There are a good number of bull trout inhabiting the drainage so be very careful when encountering these prehistoric predators.

The glorious thing about the Hoh is its ability to change. It has resisted mans attempt to contain it every time he tries. You can literally catch fish, where a month earlier, there was a gravel bar 4 feet high. Entire log jams move within the system, one can actually recognize logs reappearing from within gravel bars once fished, two decades before. It in itself is a testament to the tenacity within Hoh river steelhead. The Hoh with its relatively short system, 38 miles mouth to glacier, produces massive steelhead. These fish love there log jams, they can be found in the smallest side channel, holding with any sized pieces of lumber, boulder patches and undercuts. These steelhead will move up the system at any time, low water, high water, usually does not matter when they want in they go. Each season will have it’s section that fishes best as each season the holding water moves. The color of the Hoh River with its glacial beauty gives them a confidence to run and best of all to bite !