For anybody that is interested The NPAFC link below has documents outlining all current known information about ocean distribution of salmon. A lot more is known than land based managers would admit or like to know. For specific steelhead information look at 1996 document #192. It is more than 200 pages but figures 121 -132, 150-155, and A-52 to A-60 are steelhead distributions. An interesting PIT tag recovery is reported in 2008 document #1106. For a paper looking at the potential effects of climate change on ocean migration and distribution of salmon look at Bulletins, #4 Topic 2-2A. There are several interesting papers in that bulletin related to ocean salmon ecology. I know all of the authors of these various papers (and the first one linked above), talked to several of them at the UW SAFS holiday party yesterday, and talk about this subject almost every morning over coffee at breakfast. Take a look at the second link, the UW highseas research program has been going on for more than 50 years. It is a science program without political agendas and a good starting point for information on salmon ocean ecology. If you want to understand salmon and steelhead you cannot ignore the majority of their life history.

NPAFC

Highseas

There is no ocean harvest of steelhead though a few are intercepted in coastal fisheries. Alaska fisheries may intercept local steelhead (often kelts), in the Yakutat area fisheries are periodically closed when kelts are expected to leave the Situk. North American steelhead are caught in small numbers in the Russian EEZ coastal fisheries.

One more comment pertinent to this discussion, wild steelhead release and CNR are different management tools. CNR is harvest and is treated as such. Wild steelhead release is a program to reduce bycatch impacts. To assume the two are anything else is a common mistake. CNR will not stop the loss of a declining stock, it will only slow the rate of decline.