The Northwest Washington Steelheaders are putting the final elements in place for their annual fundraising banquet and auction that is set for Saturday, March 9, at the Deming Logging Show Museum.

In cooperation with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's Kendall Creek Hatchery, the club each year pays for the raising and marking of 45 percent of the total number of hatchery winter-run steelhead smolts that are released into the Nooksack River.

Currently housed at the club's McKinnon Pond facility on the Middle Fork are 50,000 growing steelhead fingerlings that are being fed and watched over by students of Todd Rightmire's natural resources class at Mount Baker High School and club volunteers.

Proceeds from this auction will pay for next year's hatchery steelhead brood plus major prizes and refreshments for the club's annual Bellingham Kids' Fishing Derby held in May at Whatcom Falls Park.

DIG RAZORS THIS WEEKEND

A two-day razor clam dig on the southernmost brace of Washington's Pacific Coast management zones (Long Beach and Twin Harbors) is set for Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 23-24.

This is the first in a series of recently announced winter-spring transition period razor clam openings that will get diggers of these coastal delicacies through to the first of April. The annual shifts to daylight saving time and morning tides will occur during these three upcoming March digs.

COMING SUNDAY

For more details on the Northwest Washington Steelheader banquet and the late winter razor clam dig calendar plus more fishing and hunting news, read Sunday's Outdoors Column.

Doug Huddle, the Bellingham Herald's outdoors correspondent, since 1983, has written a weekly fishing and hunting column that now appears Sundays. Read his blog and contact him at http://pblogs.belinghamherald.com/outdoors.

Reach DAVID RASBACH at david.rasbach@bellinghamherald.com or call 715-2271.