Young fish offer unique challenge.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

You can almost hear the derisive laughter of some early-day angler echoing off the water-worn walls of the Rogue River Canyon.

"You call that 'lil ol' half-pounder a steelhead? Ha ha ha!"

But the term "half-pounder" doesn't begin to do justice to the mini-steelhead that, for many anglers, defines the Rogue experience.

In fact, "half-pounders" can tip the scales at more than two pounds. Most measure from 12 to 16 inches in length.

And, when hooked on a light-weight fly rod, they thrash across the surface of the water like a tiger chasing its tail.

Half-pounders are found only in Southern Oregon and Northern California, primarily in the Rogue and Klamath basins, according to Jerry Vogt, a state fish biologist responsible for the Rogue River drainage.

What distinguishes steelhead in those waters is that they don't follow the typical steelhead life history.

Normally, steelhead wait a year or two after entering saltwater as smolts before returning to their home stream as mature adults looking to spawn.

In the Rogue and Klamath basins, however, most summer steelhead - and a small percentage of winter steelhead - return to their home waters after spending only four to six months at sea.

"They make sort of a false spawning run," Vogt said. "They come back and hang out in the river all summer long, feeding."

Which is another reason anglers love half-pounders.

These immature steelhead feed much more actively in freshwater than adult steelhead do. Some half-pounders are so aggressive about chasing a meal that they'll come back for a fly jerked out of their mouth by an angler too quick with the hook-set.

The bulk of the half-pounders stay downstream of Grants Pass, Vogt said, although a few each year are observed moving through the fish passage at Gold Ray Dam.

Still sexually immature, half-pounders cannot spawn, Vogt said. Instead, they eventually migrate back to the ocean and spend another year there before returning as mature adults.

From that point on, they display the same traits as other steelhead. That is, some die after spawning, other survive to return and spawn again.

"They're not a different species, they just developed a different life history pattern," Vogt said.

No one is sure why.

In any event, half-pounders are the underpinning of the late-summer and early-fall steelhead fishery in the Rogue River. Later, the focus shifts to adult summer steelhead and then to winter steelhead.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife releases 220,000 adipose fin-clipped summer steelhead smolts from Cole Rivers Hatchery on the upper Rogue each year. Another 264,000 winter steelhead smolts are released, half in the Rogue and half in one of its tributaries, the Applegate River.

Based on seining samples collected several times a week at Huntley Park near Gold Beach, the ODFW estimates that about 65,000 half-pounders have returned to the Rogue so far this year. Of those, 39 percent were hatchery fin-clipped and the remainder were wild.

"This year's return is about half of what the previous five-year average was," Vogt said, "but it still seems the fishery has been pretty good."

The ODFW projects an adult summer steelhead run of 18,000 fish, 70 percent of which will be wild.

Any steelhead in the Rogue River longer than 16 inches is considered an adult steelhead and, if retained, must be recorded on the angler's harvest tag.

Steelhead shorter than 16 inches are considered part of the rainbow trout bag limit, which allows five adipose fin-clipped fish per day.

And, of course, modern anglers have come up with their own terminology for any immature steelhead that's a little on the scrawny side. You guessed it: "quarter-pounder."

CAPTION(S):

Tim Conway of Rogue Canyon Outfitters grills fresh "half-pounder" steelhead fillets for a riverside lunch. Mike Stahlberg / The Register-Guard and this is light text and this is more light text