Josiah Darr and Mikayla Lewis with a bright winter steelhead taken on the Oregon Coast. These rivers see the earliest runs while inland, anglers can catch winter runs into April. (Gary Lewis/Photo for The Bulletin)

The price for an Oregon Combined Angling Tag in January is $35. You might grumble when you plunk down the greenbacks. Perhaps you’ll wonder what good your hard-earned dollars will do. Wonder no longer.

Anglers are required to record each fish kept and return the cards at the end of the year. Catch data is derived from information collected from the harvest cards.

When the data is collected, analysts compile the information to calculate run success, minimize spawning ground competition with wild fish and provide maximum potential harvest of hatchery steelhead.

You’ve heard 10 percent of the steelheaders get 90 percent of the fish? Perhaps the 10-percenters have the luck because they fish in the right places at the right times. The Sport Fishing Catch Expanded report, on the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife website, dfw.state.or.us, shows why. Let’s start with the earliest returns, the winter runs that hit the coast in November and December.

Oregon Coast

On the Wilson River, in the 2015 run year, the first bright fish streaked in on high tides in late October. In November, 99 steelhead found their way to barbecues. The action picked up in December, but it was January when Wilson River steelheaders posted their best numbers. The data shows anglers kept 2,292 steelhead in January and 1,834 in February.

According to harvest records, January is the peak month for the North Fork Nehalem. In 2015, anglers tallied 3,278 steelhead in the first month of the year.

The Nestucca, on the other hand, sees strong harvest numbers in January, February and March.

March is a peak month on many rivers, but the Alsea and her forks are a different story. A release of 120,000 1-year-old smolts go out to the ocean each year, about 5,000 are accounted for on harvest cards, the bulk being caught in the month of January.

Siletz River hatcheries spawn local wild stocks to get the eggs to release 130,000 smolts per year. According to the numbers, the Siletz fishery peaks in January, February and March.

ODFW personnel release 100,000 smolts into the Siuslaw each year. Two years later, the adults return. January sees the top of the run on this river with three times as many fish as any other month.

Columbia system

In Clatsop County, the Big Creek Hatchery turns out 60,000 smolts in its namesake stream. The fish show up in November; the run peaks in December and January, then tapers off. Big Creek hatchery fish are also stocked in nearby Gnat Creek and the Klaskanine River. Expect to see fish in Gnat and the Klaskanine in December, with the best action in January.

Upstream on the Columbia, biologists use local wild stocks and the Big Creek strain of fish in the Sandy, to the tune of 235,000 smolts per year. Want to hit the Sandy when the fishing is hot? Go in January and February.

In 2015, Hood River anglers tagged winter steelhead all the way into May, but February and March were the best months.

Willamette River and tributaries

On the Willamette, from the mouth to the falls, winter steelhead action is best in December and January. But the main focus is in its tributaries.

During the winter and summer, the Clackamas is enhanced with local (wild) stocks, Skamania, Big Creek and Donaldson strains of steelhead. Pointed toward the ocean as 1-year-olds, 440,000 smolts charge down the Willamette, into the Columbia and past the jaws at Astoria into the Pacific. Among the Clackamas fish are smolts from Eagle Creek. With so many different varieties of fish, the action is sustained through May, with a few winter steelhead recorded in June. The peak, though, according to the numbers, is in March.

Early winter action in the Clackamas is focused on the Eagle Creek fish. Around 120,000 smolts are released in the first weeks of May. When they return, they average 8 pounds each.

The adults show up at Christmas and stay through the end of February. Like all hatchery steelhead, the adipose fin is clipped, but a distinguishing feature of the Eagle Creek fish is a right ventral fin clip.

The Clackamas brood stock come from 70 percent hatchery fish collected at the hatchery and 30 percent wild fish collected at the Faraday Dam facility.

The first brood stock show up about the same time as the main run of the Eagle Creek steelhead and are spread throughout the river into mid-March.

These fish are marked with an adipose fin-clip and show up in the greatest numbers in March and bear the brunt of the winter fishery till the dogwood blooms.

Want to be a 10-percenter, in the know about where to go? Scout on the web.

Armed with inside info, be there to intercept the fish at the peak of the runs. You’ll never grumble about the price of an angling tag again.

— Gary Lewis is the host of Frontier Unlimited TV and author of Fishing Central Oregon, Fishing Mount Hood Country, Hunting Oregon and other titles. Contact Gary at www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.