Good Job WDFW enforcement - those kinds of folks are doing neither the resource or the recreational fishers any good.

The fish -
It is a female that is nearing spawn - see the protruding vent just in front of the anal fin and the nice full body; likely a week or so from spawning. At late April the peak spawning of most Nooksack fish was still a couple weeks a way. Thre are still unspawned females in the Nooksack (and other north Sound rivers) through June and even into July. The worn bottom edge of its tail is not from spawning; rather from wear from holding over the stream bottom for an extended period. When the female is "digging" her redd she does so on her side using hydraulic pressure from tail action to lift the stones and the current carries the material down stream. They can move material without even touching it. An aside is the individual females seem to be right or left handed as to which side they lay on to do the redd "digging".

Nooksack wild steelhead -
The Nooksack hosted some really neat wild steelhead. At one time there was decent numbers of very large steelhead (excess of 30#). Unfortunately they were South Fork fish and habitat issues all but destroyed that segment of the run. They were interesting in that most of those really large fish entered the river in January. Even then they were not the earliest fish. Many of the Middle Fork wild fish returned in December even though they did begin spawning until April and as mentioned peak spawning was May. The North Fork and main stem hosted the largest portion of the run and as mentioned by others they are not particularly large fish and have run timing that we normally associate with PS wild steelhead.

The Nooksack was a fun river to fish and I miss fishing her in the late winter. There will always be a fond spot in my heart for the Nooksack and her steelhead. Some of my fondest steelhead memories took place in March on the North Fork and it produced my first 20.

Tight lines
Curt