Photo by Terry W. Sheely.

It was a chilly, misty afternoon in early February. I was parked in a roadside pullover above a slow curl of Snoqualmie River water, after a meeting in Fall City and before dinner in Black Diamond — with two rare hours to kill.

A two-piece steelhead rod, bulging tackle vest and hip boots had been in my car trunk day and night since November, rigged and ready.

Fifteen minutes later, flopping in the rocks at my feet was 12 pounds of winter-run steelhead — a buck with a rosy cheek patch, chrome flanks and a missing adipose fin, chewing hard on a mat of pearl-pink colored corkie and cerise yarn stuck to its hooked jaw. I skidded the buck across the rocks and looked for a river hammer to adjust its attitude. This fish was coming home for dinner.

STEELHEAD IN PUGETROPOLIS
Stealing time for steelheading is a challenge anywhere in the state. But it’s actually a little easier in the Seattle area because of the tributary fingers of a major river system that deliver a whispered promise of close-to-home steelhead.

Within an hour or so, steelheaders can be knee-deep somewhere in the Snohomish River Basin, casting into water that produces more than half of the Puget Sound region’s entire winter steelhead catch.

According to reported catches, nearly 5,000 winter-run steelhead were hooked in the Snohomish River system. That’s roughly 54 percent of all the winter-run steelhead caught in the Puget Sound region.

Into the sweeping system feed at least 11 Snohomish River tributaries with fishable runs of winter steelhead. They include the beautiful Skykomish River, easily the hottest and most productive winter-run river in the Puget Sound region.

And this region, as described by WDFW, is geographically huge, encompassing dozens of steelhead rivers from Sekiu on Juan de Fuca Strait east to the Cascade Mountains, and from Olympia north to British Columbia, including all of Hood Canal and a bunch of good saltwater-beach fisheries.

In that vast reach of steelhead country, no other river system comes close to producing the number of hatchery steelhead that winter anglers pull from the Snohomish system. And that includes the Skagit River — once an international celebrity, but which produced only 500 catch-and-eat winter steelhead during last year’s 2005-06 season.

Two other backyard rivers, the Green and Puyallup, are convenient to Seattle anglers. But both have major problems. Both rivers lie south of Seattle, fishing pressure is intense and they are commercially gill-netted by treaty tribes. Annual steelhead returns are skidding downhill despite huge plants of young smolts.

Even while WDFW, tribal biologists and sport-fishing groups stand a puzzled death watch over the Green and Puyallup, savvy Seattle steelheaders steal off for quick-hit adventures with more promise on the Snohomish Steelhead 11 — steelhead-hiding tributaries within 30 miles of Seattle.

The biggest, Skykomish and Snoqualmie, are regionally famous and deliver the biggest catch counts. They also attract the heaviest fishing pressure. Prospecting on the smaller flows, like the Tolt, Raging, Pilchuck and Sultan rivers, can also uncover dime-bright surprises for pocket-picking steelheaders who learn the water. And there’s never a crowd.

Next time you plan a steelheading caper to steal away from Seattle, check out the Snohomish 11.

1. MAIN STEM SNOHOMISH
The Snohomish is a large, flood-prone, pastoral lowland river formed by two of Puget Sound’s most popular steelhead and salmon rivers: the Skykomish and Snoqualmie.

Their confluence is three miles southwest of Monroe. The Snohomish is a wide, slow, tidal-influenced, mud-bottomed conduit for winter steelhead. It produces about 360 winter-runs, most of them in December and January.