The Hoh is the headline river of the Olympic Peninsula's rainforest coast, and standing in for a whole system of them — the Bogachiel, Sol Duc, Calawah and Queets among its neighbors. This is wild winter steelhead country: big, cold, rain-fed rivers running out of the Olympics through some of the wettest forest in the country, holding some of the last strong runs of native winter fish in the lower 48. It is also one of the most regulation-sensitive rivers in the region. The fishing is dictated by the weather: the river blows out on every serious storm, and the prize window is the drop, when the hydrograph falls and the glacial-gray water clears back to a fishable green. Too high and it's unsafe and unfishable; too low and clear and the fish see everything. You swing big intruders and tube flies on heavy tips, or fish them down and across through the soft inside seams, and you earn every grab. The rules here change often, emergency closures are routine, and the rivers are co-managed with the treaty tribes — so the honest first question isn't 'is it fishing,' it's 'is it open, and is it green.' Check the regulations and the gauge in that order.

• Glacial