March is the cruelest month. At least, it is for anglers in the Rocky Mountains. March flirts with the idea of spring, stringing along enough warm days that the bigger bugs start hatching. After a winter of tossing tiny flies, the size 18 blue-winged olives that first show up in March are a welcome reprieve.

In recent years, steelhead populations along the west coast of the United States have continued to dwindle. 2019 was another dismal year for steelhead returns throughout the Pacific Northwest, sparking fishing closures, with the usual suspects to blame—poor ocean conditions caused by marine heatwaves, the impacts of hatchery fish on wild populations and, of course, habitat degradation and the myriad other impacts of dams on watersheds that are historically home to anadromous fish.