Steelhead, like all salmonids, cover their redds. A single female will dig a series of nests, each one upstream of the last so that the action of digging covers the previous nest with the dislodged gravel. Anadromous Dolly Varden enter the rivers in the late summer to spawn, their peak spawning month is September. Like all other salmonids (including cutthroat and young steelhead and coho), Dolly Varden eat salmon eggs, almost always those that have been washed out of the nest during the nest-digging and spawning activities.