Sea-run cutthroat are available in the salt year-round. Their numbers there are smallest during the late winter and early spring months. Cutthroat usually run up the larger rivers in the late summer and fall to spawn anywhere from February to June with a peak usually in March.

In some small rivers and creeks, the run timing is much more truncated. Notably in some of the small Hood Canal and South Sound streams they pop in during the high winter flows, take care of business and almost immediately head back out. I've caught bright, fresh-run cutts in the Stillaguamish as early as July and as late as February and, in the pre-dam days, everyone agreed that the first runs of "harvest trout" would be in the Cowlitz on the Fourth of July. Sea-run cutthroat exhibit a greater variety of run timing than almost any other native salmonid.