Questions about Steelhead

I know there are a few Steelie experts on here, professional or not!

These things have been keeping me awake at night;

1. How does one tell the difference between a Steelhead and a regular old rainbow trout. I know some steelies get more, er, steel coloured, but some just look like big trout. Which I guess they are. Is there anything else?

2. Steelhead are trout which have been to saltwater and back right? Where do they go once in saltwater? deep/shallow? near/far? What do they eat? Do they school? Has anyone ever caught them in saltwater? Is that even legal?

I'm sorry to hear that you've lost sleep over steelhead. You're not alone, but usually the lack of sleep involves memories of the big one that got away.

According to the regulations in California, "a steelhead trout is defined as any rainbow trout greater than 16 inches in length found in anadromous waters."   Works for me.   In the end they are the same species Oncorhynchus mykiss and there has been some research done to prove it.  I recently saw one study done in rivers in Kamchatka (Russia's Pacific Coast) where wild rainbows and steelhead live in un-dammed rivers.  They found that there is more genetic diversity between rivers then there is between the steelhead and the trout found farther up the same stream.  Basically, some do the ocean migration thing and others live farther up the river in smaller tributaries and don't migrate.

As far as where they go in the ocean.  People do fish for them and catch them in the nearshore ocean in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.  I'm not sure where they go exactly, but they probably behave much like salmon in the ocean.

Hope this helps you get some sleep.

Brian

aha, so in order to be defined as a "steelhead" an O.mykiss doesn't necessarily have to have gone to the saltwater. Interesting.

I can sleep easier now knowing that the 18inch O.mykiss I caught in Trinity Lake wasn't actually, legally, a steelhead.

The DFG definition is simply for enforcement purposes, if it hasn't been in the salt, it isn't really a steelhead.  Nobody really knows where they go or what the do in the salt, it is one of the last great unknowns in salmonid biology.  However with new tags and new otolith techniques I don't expect the secret to last long.

As far as telling them apart, its a breeze for adults.  Steelis will be long, slender torpedos next to their resident cousins.