Washington splits its personality at the Cascades: salmon and steelhead rivers toward the coast, and the sunny Columbia Basin's walleye-bass-trout lakes (Banks, Potholes, Moses) in the east. Add resident-trout seeps by the hundred and Puget Sound's salt: one license, several states' worth of water.
Reports current for Friday, October 23
Every one of the 24 Washington waters we cover has a live read this morning. 7 are scoring 4 out of 5 or better and 1 is slow. Water runs 47 F to 62 F. Pressure is holding steady on most of them, so the day comes down to water temperature and wind. 1 has a better-than-even chance of rain.
Best right now: Kalama River 4/5, Klickitat River 4/5, Lake Washington 4/5
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
Banks Lake: a 27-mile reservoir in the Grand Coulee where WDFW names smallmouth and walleye the most popular catches.
The Cowlitz below Barrier Dam: hatchery salmon and steelhead water in Lewis County, with 2026-27 rules that change at every boundary.
Washington's blue-ribbon canyon: wild rainbows on a farmland river that fishes like Montana.
Washington's salmon town: a charter fleet built for kings and coho, jetty rockfish, and razor-clam beaches under the Grays Harbor sky.
Drano Lake: the Little White Salmon River's backwater on the Columbia, where hatchery spring Chinook gather from late March through May and fall Chinook from August, under some of Washington's most detailed salmon rules.
The canyon of October dreams: Washington's swing-water classic, where summer steelhead eat dry flies between basalt walls.
The Skagit: a Puget Sound river regulated reach by reach, with fall coho seasons and wild steelhead fishing only when WDFW opens it by emergency rule.
Rufus Woods Lake: 51 miles of Columbia River reservoir above Chief Joseph Dam, where the license you need depends on which shore you fish.
The seep-lake sea: sand dunes drowned in irrigation water, walleye in the stumps and a desert fishery with Everglades looks.
The Columbia's polished trib: a spring-fed steelhead river of ledgerock pools, summer runs in September light and fly-water tradition.
The Hump: Grays Harbor's rainforest river, where winter kings and chrome steelhead reward those who learn its moody tides.
The Cowlitz's big pool: Riffe's drowned valley runs landlocked coho, tiger-striped bass water and fog-forest solitude.
Lake Merwin on the North Fork Lewis: WDFW says kokanee are the main target, with tiger muskie, planted in 1995, also popular.
Three dams, four runs: the Lewis below Merwin delivers winter steelhead, spring kings and a fall coho stack an hour from Portland.
Lake Chelan: Washington's largest natural lake, where WDFW lists kokanee, lake trout, cutthroat and smallmouth among the catch.
Lake Washington: 21,934 acres between Seattle and Bellevue with cutthroat, bass, perch and crappie, and salmon seasons only when runs allow.
Lake Sammamish: a 4,853-acre King County lake for cutthroat, smallmouth bass and yellow perch, where kokanee are catch-and-release.
A 4,755-acre Baker River reservoir northeast of Concrete, where trapped-and-hauled sockeye support a summer fishery set each year by WDFW.
The Columbia River behind Grand Coulee Dam: 151 miles to the Canadian border, with net-pen rainbows, kokanee, walleye, smallmouth and white sturgeon.
Puget Sound steelhead: the Skykomish runs winter and summer fish an hour from Seattle.
The Klickitat River: a Columbia tributary from Gilbert Peak to Lyle, with salmon, steelhead, a Yakama Nation dip-net fishery and 10.8 Wild and Scenic miles.
The Olympic Peninsula river freed by the largest dam removal in US history, and closed to fishing inside Olympic National Park in 2026.
A 6,728-acre lake in the city of Moses Lake, where WDFW surveys find walleye and smallmouth bass in high numbers.
Icicle Creek, the Icicle River in WDFW's rules: Leavenworth's hatchery creek, closed below the irrigation footbridge except for WDFW emergency salmon seasons.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: March.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
The Columbia Basin is the everyday jackpot: Banks Lake's walleye and smallmouth in basalt canyons, Potholes' dune-country largemouth and crappie, and quality trout lakes (Lenice, Dry Falls) managed for size. The Columbia itself grows the biggest walleye in America: the current world-record class fish swim between Wallula and the gorge.
Salmon define the west: springers in the rivers, summer kings and coho in the Sound and at Buoy 10, fall rivers full of chrome. Winter steelheading on the Olympic Peninsula (the Hoh, Sol Duc) remains the sport's moody cathedral. Rules shift constantly with run sizes: check emergency regs before every trip.
Cold, food-rich impoundments and low harvest built a population where 15-pounders are annual and the world record is a live possibility: troll the gorge pools February-April for the giants.