Below the 522 bridge, saw 15-20 steelies jump from 5:30am - 11:00am but couldn't get a hit on anything, bait or artificial. Saw some nice fish though! Good luck

The steelies you saw jumping might have been downstreamers (spawned out winters). I know when they come close to spawning in the spring they splash around alot before spawning. However, i have seen some bright summer fish roll to, but that many in just a few hours is probably not summer runs, given the time of year and water conditions. Have seen a few fish taken on the sky so far, looks like a pretty good season ahead.....

There was a gentleman on the bank there that said they were jumping like that since Tues. While being kind of annoying that they wouldn't hit, it was awesome to see so many fish in the river for a change. This is the first time I have had a chance to fish for summer run (usually working 6-days a week by now) Take care

Those fish might have been summer chinook. I've been getting a lot of reports of incindental catches of these fish in the Snohomish and lower Skykomish. WDFW's hatchery between Startup and Goldbar is doing a good job of building this particular race of chinook back up. Remember you can't retain any of these fish although they are very often caught on a summer-run steelhead presentation. These chinook are beautiful, usually run from 10-25 lbs. They are a blast to catch but please relase with care! They don't spawn until the fall and can't take a bunch of abuse in June. If we could get WDFW to mark all their chinook we might make a case for a selective fishery on these fish. Unfortunately, from a management standpoint they get grouped with the fall chinook which aren't doing so well in this system. We need to get the tribes to agree to allow WDFW to mark all chinook then convince Curt Kramer that the summer chinook population is healthy enough(if it truely is)in the Skykomish to allow a selective fishery.

Gary Bee