And this is the theme of this year’s Steelhead Week. In a perfect world, you would be able to float the Moonshine to Twin Bridges section of the Siletz River upon anadromous green water and limit out on winter steelhead every weekend. Or walk the banks of the East Fork Millicoma River and cast a bobber into that pretty water from under the boughs of a magnificent Myrtle tree. But this is not a perfect world.

What do you do when there is no anadromous green water to be found in all the rain-swollen rivers or even the fictional Tamanawis River? This week we take you to the small waters of the North Coast, where you can find the creeks and streams of small watersheds that are far more likely to drop and clear when the bigger coastal rivers are still high and definitely not anadromous green.

What if storms are stacked up out on the Pacific Ocean for weeks on end, and it seems you may never get to fish a river on the drop again? We head to the South Coast to learn how to go plunking for steelhead on the famed gravel bars of the Chetco and Rogue Rivers, by which many steelhead pass closely on their way upstream to spawn.

Winter steelhead fishing in perfect conditions in Oregon is never guaranteed, but for anglers willing to explore a little, to adventure outside those favorite stretches of anadromous green water, there are opportunities and amazing experiences out there.