For the past couple of years I've been spending the majority of my winter steelhead bank time at Reiter on the sky. I'd like to expand my repetoire so that I can occasionally get away from the Reiter crowds. Does anyone have any suggestions? Any place on the sno or sky would be great. Feel free to PM the response.

Thanks in advance,

Aaron

Aaron - I don’t mean to single you out, but I have seen a couple of these types of posts over the past few weeks. Most successful steelhead fishermen have spent hundreds of hours exploring the rivers they fish to find the access locations. To me, this is one of the reasons that I enjoy fishing. The experience of finding a nice piece of water on your own, accurately reading it, and hooking a steelhead is one of the great joys of steelheading. My recommendation to folks just getting started is to put in the leg work and get out and explore.

In terms of the Snoqualmie and Sky, the best areas to explore are fairly obvious. Sultan, Ben Howard Road, Monroe, Duvall, Carnation Research Farms Road, confluence of the Tolt, Fall City, and Tokul Creek. Best of luck, and enjoy the time just exploring these new areas!

SA

I agree with SA about getting out and exploring a good place to explore would be the wallace flats or the cracker bar you can walk forever on both stretches you just got to find the trails. Reiter should hbe heating upi next week with all this rain maybe you should try it with me on Saturday if you want I think it is about time that I made my once a year trip up there.

I agree! Next week looks like the time to make my anual visit to Reiter

All the spots you could ever fish can be found RIGHT HERE.

What SA said.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

A old geezer told me once for steelhead

" If the water is high go high, if the water is low go low "

To this day I live by that saying

Aaron:

There's no point in wandering around aimlessly - you can save yourself a lot of scouting time (and give yourself more time with your line in the water) if you do your homework first.

Get a good map, or go to Mapquest.com and just enter the name of one of the cities (like "Startup", for example) and scope out the area first. You can print out the maps and bring them with you so you have a much better idea of where to begin.

Here's another good map site that you may want to checkout:

http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/publicwk/swm/maps/#Watershed

Let's just hope the rivers drop for the weekend!

Thanks for the replies everyone, public and private. I've now got some good ideas for this upcoming weekend.

Thanks again,

Aaron

One under utilized section you might want to explore for brats would be the lower section of the Sultan River. There is some bank access on both sides with the east side having a little more access.

Another spot you might want to explore is the two bit (eight bits now) hole. Just drive past (up river) where everyone launches till you can't go any further and either fish upriver as far as you want or hike all the way up to the lower part of the Taylor hole and fish back to your rig.

Beezer

Dear Arron, you have just encountered what they call " zipperlip " , but they are right. Part of the fun of stealheading is the exploring, but it's a lot of time and work. It's the only way, though.