Gentlemen-

As someone that has been fortunate enough to fish these two areas before the crush of recent years, please let me give the following suggestions. Neither of these rivers can take any harvest. Even though our zipper heads "in charge" give the right for sport anglers to take native steelhead, I beg you to release these irreplaceable fish. Queets and Quinault native fish are two of the finest races of steelhead on the West Coast. Both streams have been clobbered the last few winters from trophy hunters and fishermen that are only there to whack natives, the bigger the fish the better. These large strains need our protection. If you go, please leave the bait at home. These fish aggressively take drift lures without bait. Give bank anglers room and respect their water. The Queets is becoming a hell hole of native killing, rude boat fishermen and it truly makes me sad to see the most gorgeous river in the state turn into another Wynooche.


The best way to help these streams is to write letters to the state and to the superintendent of Olympic National Park, telling them to make these streams- our last bastion of large, aggressive native steelhead- not go the way of the Skagit, Sky and Sauk. Make them catch and release, and please get rid of the bait! Thanks for letting me vent.

Bill.