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, September 4
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
The Grand Coulee's desert canyon lake: walleye, smallmouth and basalt-wall bass fishing.
Washington's numbers river: the hatchery workhorse for steelhead and salmon.
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.
The Columbia's famous corner: a drowned rivermouth where spring Chinook stack by the thousand and the hog lines write Northwest legend.
The canyon of October dreams: Washington's swing-water classic, where summer steelhead eat dry flies between basalt walls.
The Northwest's mother river: Puget Sound's biggest steelhead-and-salmon system, eagle winters and the birthplace of the modern spey.
The Columbia's triploid pond: net-pen rainbows to double digits in a windswept canyon pool between two dams.
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.
The Lewis River's tiger den: Merwin's fjord-green water hides Washington's tiger muskies and kokanee under Mount St. Helens' shadow.
Three dams, four runs: the Lewis below Merwin delivers winter steelhead, spring kings and a fall coho stack an hour from Portland.
America’s third-deepest lake: Chelan drops 1,486 feet into the North Cascades and holds kokanee, lake trout and burbot.
Seattle’s urban lake: 22,000 acres holding smallmouth, cutthroat and one of the country’s odder sockeye runs.
Seattle’s eastside lake: Sammamish holds smallmouth, cutthroat and kokanee in suburban water.
A North Cascades reservoir: Baker Lake holds sockeye and rainbow trout under Mount Baker’s glaciers.
The Columbia impounded: Lake Roosevelt runs 150 miles of walleye, rainbow and kokanee behind Grand Coulee.
Puget Sound steelhead: the Skykomish runs winter and summer fish an hour from Seattle.
A Columbia tributary through basalt canyons: the Klickitat runs steelhead and salmon past Mount Adams.
The river that got its dams removed: the Elwha is rebuilding wild salmon runs on the Olympic Peninsula.
Central Washington’s desert lake: Moses Lake holds walleye, bass and crappie in irrigated country.
Leavenworth’s creek: Icicle runs hatchery chinook and mountain trout out of the Enchantments.
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).
| Water | Type | County | Live gauge | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Banks Lake | Reservoir | Grant | modeled | Apr |
| Cowlitz River | River | Cowlitz | USGS | Jan |
| Yakima River | River | Benton | USGS | Apr |
| Westport | Coastal | Grays Harbor | modeled | Jul |
| Drano Lake | Lake | Skamania | modeled | Jan |
| Grande Ronde River | River | Asotin | USGS | Jan |
| Skagit River | River | Skagit | USGS | Jan |
| Rufus Woods Lake | Reservoir | Douglas | modeled | Apr |
| Potholes Reservoir | Reservoir | Grant | modeled | Apr |
| Kalama River | River | Cowlitz | modeled | Jan |
| Humptulips River | River | Grays Harbor | modeled | Jan |
| Riffe Lake | Reservoir | Lewis | modeled | May |
| Lake Merwin | Reservoir | Clark | modeled | May |
| Lewis River | River | Cowlitz | USGS | Jan |
| Lake Chelan | Lake | Chelan | USGS | Apr |
| Lake Washington | Lake | King | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Sammamish | Lake | King | modeled | Mar |
| Baker Lake | Reservoir | Whatcom | modeled | Apr |
| Lake Roosevelt | Reservoir | Lincoln | modeled | Mar |
| Skykomish River | River | Snohomish | USGS | Jan |
| Klickitat River | River | Klickitat | modeled | Jan |
| Elwha River | River | Clallam | USGS | Jan |
| Moses Lake | Lake | Grant | modeled | Apr |
| Icicle Creek | River | Chelan | USGS | Jan |
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.