TROY — This year’s Wallowa District Steelhead Rendezvous and Workshop will be Oct. 17-20 at the Wallowa Fish District. Interested participants have until Friday, Oct. 4 to sign up.

The rendezvous and workshop will be at the campground across from the Wenaha Wildlife Area headquarters near Troy.

Kyle Bratcher, district fish biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Enterprise, said in a press release that interested anglers can sign up for the rendezvous at https://tinyurl.com/troy-fish. Anyone interested in participating in the Steelhead 101 workshop may sign up at https://tinyurl.com/steelhead101.

The workshop is being limited to those who have not previously participated in one to make room for more new steelheaders. Cost for the workshop is $70, Bratcher said. Other events for the weekend are free.

Anglers must have a regular Oregon fishing license to participate.

Organization of some of the meals and presentations are still in the works, but further information can be obtained by calling Bratcher at 541-318-7928 or his cell at 541-263-0781.

As in previous years, the ODFW will be collecting steelhead to tally the number of fish heading up from the ocean. The department counts one-salt as well as two-salt fish. One-salt are those that spend one year in the ocean before their return migration to spawn, while two-salt fish spend two years in the ocean.

Bratcher said he’s unsure what to expect in this year’s count.

“Ir’s hard to say” whether there will be more or fewer fish.

Steelhead season opened Sept. 1, Bratcher said. Any wild steelhead must be released, according to ODFW fishing regulations. Only hatchery-raised fish can be kept. The dorsal fin on hatchery-raised fish hss been removed, and the fin on wild fish has not, making it easy to tell the difference.

He said he also has been working on learning more about the lake trout population in Wallowa Lake.

“We’ve long suspected that spawning is limited and thus, we haven’t seen a big increase in lake trout and subsequently the collapse of kokanee like some other lakes across the West,” he said.

There is also potential for lake trout to compete with Endangered Species Act-listed bull trout in Wallowa Lake.