PAT NEAL: More research is needed
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 25, 2026
IT WAS ANOTHER tough week in the news. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, in cooperation with Olympic National Park, closed the upper sections of the Hoh River to even catch-and-release steelhead fishing.
This is a cataclysmic ruling for those of us that view steelhead fishing as a form of religion. We believe that every day spent steelhead fishing is a day not counted against the span of our lives. In addition, this form of religion allows us to go to heaven before we die.
For example, for me, fishing for steelhead inside of Olympic National Park is a form of heaven. When this earthly form of paradise is denied to us through a bureaucratic edict, we feel cheated out of the destiny of our life journey.
Then again, if catch-and-release steelhead fishing hurts the fish, we would gladly do the right thing and hang up the gear and get off the river until the runs improve.
The simple fact is the steelhead are one of the toughest critters that swim.
We don’t call them steelhead for nothing. I’ve seen them swim 30 miles upstream with big chunks bitten out of them from attacks from seals, sea lions, sharks and eagles. In fact, very few salmon or steelhead make it up our rivers without serious wounds, but they swim upriver anyway.
So, if catch-and-release fishing, with artificial lures and single barbless hooks endangered the steelhead, we would see them dead in the river shining like silver dollars in the deep blue water. But we don’t.
No, I suspect these rules have another goal. To squeeze anglers into smaller and smaller areas so they can be monitored down to the last cast.
It started when the state closed almost every other river in Washington to steelhead fishing, while the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula were left open.
This crowded the last remaining hardcore steelhead anglers from all over the Western United States and beyond into a compact area where they could be studied and monitored with helicopters, drones, trail cams and teams of fish checkers and fish cops patrolling the water.
Jamming the anglers into smaller areas led to the row versus wade conflict. While some anglers wade in the river, others row a boat. They got in each other’s way.
Scientists have long studied the effects of overcrowding on mice and rats in the laboratory.
Back in the 1960s, a researcher named John Calhoun created a rat and mouse utopia where the rodents were free to overpopulate. Which quickly led to sinister anti-social behavior which Calhoun termed, “behavioral sinks.”
Over time, the surviving rodents displayed a lack of interest in sex and raising their young.
One can’t help but wonder if humans would behave in the same way given the same conditions.
Similarly, the Olympic Peninsula was once described as a fishing paradise.
As more and more anglers were confined into a smaller area by the scientists, overcrowding led to disputes over fish, anti-social behaviors and dangerous incidents.
Anglers wrecked their boats in desperate attempts to fish rivers they were not capable of rowing and had to be rescued.
A striking parallel to Calhoun’s experiment has been observed in the demographics of the surviving anglers on Olympic Peninsula rivers, where very few females and almost no juveniles were observed fishing for steelhead.
This could indicate that the surviving anglers, like the surviving rats, had lost interest in sex and raising their young.
Whether this could represent a behavioral sink or an evolutionary trend is unsure.
More research is needed.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
