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Steelhead Drift fishing Gear and Set-ups

Drift fishing is the most common method used for steelhead; it is also one of the more difficult to master. You need to have the right gear, know what type of water steelhead hold in, and the hardest part is learning the difference between bouncing over rocks and a steelhead strike.

Over the years, I have been asked how you know when you have a hit while drift fishing for Steelhead. The true answer is you never really know for sure! When bouncing along the bottom of the river every time you bump a rock it feels something like a strike. There is a difference but until you feel it, it is hard to explain.

Some times your line will just stop this is always a good sign that there is a steelhead taking your line. Other times you will feel your line and it feels like it’s rolling over gravel (this happens quit often when the water is cold) This to is a good sign that you are having a steelhead strike. There are times when a steelhead will leave no doubt they have taken your line as they nearly jerk the rod out of your hand. Most of the time however it is just a slight difference in the feel of the line and the longer you fish for steelhead the better you become at feeling these minor differences.

There are times where you will not feel anything at all and this probably happens more then any of us know. I like to watch my line where it meets the water most of the time it leaves a small wake much like a miniature boat. However, watching this when a steelhead is toying with your bait it will look like this wake is swaying back and forth in the same spot whenever I see this I will set the hook and more time then not it will be a steelhead.

There are times when you will be watching your line as it drifts through the hole and you notice that the speed at which it was drifting has slowed this to, is a sign that you need to set the hook. I believe that when this happens the steelhead has been following you lure down stream and has just decided to pick it up to see what it is.

The bottom line is you never really know if it is a Steelhead strike or just bumping down the river. The best advice I can give is if you feel something different set the hook, if your line stops set the hook, if your line is not drifting as fast as it was set the hook, and when in doubt set the hook!!!

Let us look at what you need to start drift fishing:

The Rod
Your Fishing rod needs to be sensitive enough to give you a good feel of the bottom as you bounce over rocks and gravel, and at the same time it needs to be strong enough to give you a good hook set when you have 30 to 50 yards of line strung out across the river. Your rod choice will be the most important piece to the drift fishing equation so choose wisely.

Here are some things to consider when you are selecting your Rod:

• What’s the size of lure or bait you will be using (heavy, light, ultra light?)
• The type of reel you will be using on rod (spinning reel, or bait casting)
• What is rod made from (graphite, fiberglass ) these will determine the feeling and strength of your rod
• Rod action this is the bend in the rod (Fast, Medium, Slow).
• What size of line you plan on using (2 lb, 6 lb, 10 lb, 15 lb, 30 lb test)
• The length of rod, if your casting from the beach or open area and need to make long cast you will want a longer rod 8 feet or longer, if you are going to be fishing from a boat or where there is a lot of brush you may want 7 foot or shorter. This will determine what type of reel you use to keep a good balance of your rod.
• What type of warranty does it have (Rods do break when fishing these large fish)

The Reel
The reel needs to match your rod having a well-balanced rod is the key. My personal preference is a bait casting reel (some fisherman call these levelwind) they do take some getting use to, however, they are very effective when drift fishing, the bait casting reel will allow you to release line while maintaining control and you can follow the drift longer. You will need to get to and stay where the fish are holding.

The spinning reel works well for drift fishing also and is preferred when casting light lures or fishing along banks with heavy brush. Do not think that you have to use a baitcasting reel in order to catch steelhead. I often find myself switching to a spinning reel under many conditions.

Choosing a Reel :

• Make sure it matches the style of fishing you intend on doing
• The amount of line the reel can hold (if you are fishing big water you will want more line)
• The type of line you are going to use (braided lines can cut into the metal of a reel) – (newer reels use titanium for the new lines).

 

• Look for a quality manufacturer as your reel will be tested by these big fish
• Make sure the drag system works smoothly

Line
The line you use should match the rod, reel and the conditions you will be fishing. The Rule here is that the clearer the water is the lighter the line you want to use. I have gone as light as 4 lb test when fishing in clear slow moving pools but you need to have a rod matched to this. Normally you will want to use line in the 10 to 15 pound test range.

Braided or mono lines, will be more a matter of your personal preference.

Lures
This is where steelhead fishing gets tricky and experience comes into play. What you will be using will again depend on the water conditions, low and clear keep your lures and bait small and pale. If the rivers are up and murky, you will want to use a larger lure and dark and bright colors. Sometime just using a small piece of shrimp or a small cluster of eggs is what you will need. You can check with the locals and see what they are using for the conditions. As for the color of lures this is any bodies guess so make sure you have a good assortment to choose from as this changes continually even through out the day.

Bait
Steelheads use their excellent sense of smell as well as their eye site they also have an uncanny scents to detect movement. When the water is so muddy you cannot see any thing in the water, steelhead can find your bait by movement and smell. Some of the most common baits are shrimp, eggs, night crawlers, and sand shrimp. Some anglers combine these baits giving they feel this gives them a little edge over other anglers.
 
You are also going to need an assortment of Swivels, Hooks, Lead/weights, and Leaders.

There are hundreds of ways of tying your rig up and it seems that every steelhead angler has their own special way of tying up a rig. I will list a couple that you may want to use to get you started.

First the quickest and simplest

• slip a piece of surgical tubing about one and a half inches long onto your line
• then apply an appropriate amount of pencil lead into the tubing
• Now you can tie on your hook and lure using an appropriate knot. If you are using a hook with corky or bait us the bait-loop knot. If you are using a lure, use the cinch knot.

With the set up, it is easy to adjust, the distance from your weight to your hook, you simple slide the weight to the desired distance and you are read to go.

The next one will take a little more time to tie, although, it is used by many more anglers and perhaps is the most common method.

You will need a hook, weight, corky, and leader for this set up. You will find this set-up tied many different ways from using pencil lead, bank sinkers and slinkies. The principle remains the same regardless of the type of weight you use.

• Start by tying the swivel to the end of your line.
• Tie on or clip on the weight to the other end of the swivel. It is a good idea to use a lighter weight line for the sinker that way if it becomes snagged it will break off before your main line does and you will only have to replace your weight.
• Tie your hook on with the bait loop knot to your leader the leader should be somewhere between 18 to 30 inches long.
• Slip on your corky and then tie the leader to the same side of the swivel as the weight using a cinch knot.

Like I said you are going to find numerous ways of tying these set-ups, however, what I want to do here is give you a simple and effect way to get you started fishing.

In our next post we will be taking about where to use this method and how to fish it correctly until then have a great day.

Steelhead Fishing Techniques

You have all the gear you need to head out on the river and start pulling in that steelhead. However, what are you going to use for bait or to hook them and just how are you going to fish for them.

You have a number of ways that you can fish for steelhead, however, each will require their own special gear.
Drift fishing for steelhead may be the most common method used when steelhead fishing.
It requires the least amount of gear since all you need is a weight/sinker and a hook. Drift fishing produces steelhead for anglers on a steady basis also. However, drift fishing does require that an angler learn how to read the river and they will need to realize just what a bite feels like. Although the steelhead is large and aggressive fish, their bite can be quite difficult for the beginning angler to detect. Even after forty years of fishing, they still surprise me from time to time.

For the beginning angler there are two ways that I recommend for them to try when first starting out. Jig fishing or plunking for steelhead are easy productive ways of fishing. Jig fishing with a bobber or float is the most productive way I have found for the novice angler to start catching fish.

• The bite is easy to detect since you watch your float and when it goes down you set the hook.
• You do not have to worry about getting snagged, and spend all your time tying on new rigs.
• You can watch your float and know exactly where you jig is at, making it easier to find the seams in the river.
• It is one of the best ways an angler can fish deep slow moving pools, I use this method on a number of hole that I would not be able to fish other wise.

Plunking is a style of fishing just as its name implies. You set up a rig, and plunk it out in the river and wait for a steelhead to come along and take your offering. Plunking too can be very productive under the right circumstances. Learning when and where to use this method will take some experience however. Unless some one has shown you, a good place and time to try this method you will be better of using the float and jig as it will produce fish through out the season.

Using a side planner along with a hotshot lure or something similar is an exciting way to catch steelhead also. Here again you need to know how to read the river and have some idea of where a steelhead will lay or travel through. Once you learn how to set this up and fish it correctly, it will produce fish on days when nothing else will work.

I should mention here that fly-fishing for steelhead might not be the most productive method of catching steelhead it for sure is the most exciting and we ill be covering fly-fishing in later articles also. For those of you that would like to give fly-fishing a try you will need to have lots of patients and strong determination; however, the rewards are well worth the effort once a steelhead is on your line.

If you have access to a boat then trolling, back trolling, back drifting, are some of the other ways you can fish. If you do not have a boat do not worry as a majority of the steelhead we catch are from the bank. Even when we have had use of a boat, we often find ourselves beaching the boat so we can fish a hole from shore. I would be the first to say a boat is nice to have at times; however, they are not a necessary item to catch steelhead

Learning what technique to use, and when to use it, comes with experience and we will be covering each of these in detail in the coming days. We are going to be talking about what type of gear you will need for each technique, show you how to set it up, where to use it, and how to seek out those holding spots where steelhead just love to lay.

Until Next, time The Steelhead Angler.

Common Fishing Knots

By now, you should have an idea as to what type of rod and reel you are going to
need, and how you should dress in order to fish for winter steelhead.So let us start putting our gear together and to do that successfully we will need to learn how to tie some common knots.

The correct knot is an important part of steelhead fishing.More steelhead are lost do to the fact that many angler have not taken the time to master knot tying.The knot is always going to be the weakest point in any set-up and mastering this art is as important as any other factor if not the most important part, in order to be a successful steelhead angler you need to know how to tie good knots.

Below are just a few of the more common fishing knots you will want to learn how to tie.You will find that there are a number of ways of tying these knots, and that there are hundreds if not thousand of different variations of knots out there. I believe that it is always best to keep things simple so here are a few that I use every time I go steelhead fishing.If you take, they time to master these knots for steelhead fishing, you will have learned enough ways and knots to get you fishing. You can then learn and refine these techniques as you gain experience while you are fishing.

The Arbor Knot: Used to tie your line to your reel!

Attaching the line to your fishing reel does not have to be fancy or strong.The quickest and easiest way to do this is start out by tying an over hand knot near the end of your line and pull it
tight. Then run the line around the spool hub or arbor, make an overhand knot around the standing line, and pull the knot snug. Clip off the tag end leaving about a 1/8 inch tag and pull tight onto the arbor. This will work on both a spinning reel and a casting reel.

Here is an example of another way of tying your line to the spool if you feel you need a good tight secure knot it is a little more complicated however. Tying Line to Reel

The Albright Knot Instructions

The Albright knot is a great knot for tying two different types or diameter lines together and typically, the line will break before the knot does. It is a good knot to use if you are tying braided line to monofilament line and is easy and quick to learn. 

The Albright Knot Instructions

	STEP 1.Bend a loop in the end of the heavierline and hold between thumb and forefinger of left hand. Insert the end of the lighter line through loop from the top.
	STEP 2. Slip end of lighter line under your thumb and pinch it tightly against the heavier strands of the loop. Wrap the first turn of the lighter line over itself and continue wrapping the round end of the loop. Take at least 10 turns with the lighter line around all three strands.
	STEP 3. Insert end of the lighter line through end of loop from the bottom. It is important that the smaller line enters and leaves the loop on same side.
	STEP 4. With the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, slide coils of the lighter line towards the end of the loop, stop 1/8″ from end of loop. Using pliers, pull end of lighter line tight to keep coils from slipping off loop.
	STEP 5. With your left hand still holding the heavier line, pull on the standing part of the lighter line. Pull the end of the lighter line and the standing part a second time. Pull the standing part of the heavy mono and the standing part of the light line. Trim both tag ends.
	Step 6. While some angler believe this step is necessary I have not found it to be the case. However if you are concerned about the loop pulling through you can add a couple of half hitches to the looped line which is the larger dia. or the braided lines before you trim off the tags.

Another good knot for tying two different types of line together is the Uni-Knot the following video will provide a very good demonstration showing you how to tie this knot.

Tying two Lines Together

 

Tying a snelled hook: A strong knot for tying on your hook

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Start by threading the end of the line, through the eye twice, leaving a large loop hanging below the hook. Now you need to hold both lines along the shank of the hook, just pinch them next to the eye.Use the loop to wind tight coils around the shank and both lines, from the eye upwards. Make anywhere from six to 10 turns.Using the fingers to hold these tight coils in place, pull the line (extending from the eye) until the whole loop has passed under these tight coils and tightens against them. Once the coils are drawn up, you can use pliers to hold the hook while pulling up the end of the line, making sure to pull hard so the coils are tight.

Clinch Knot: Can be used for tying on a swivel or hook!

	Start by passing the line through the eye of the hook, or swivel.
	Then double back and make five to eight turns around the line, You can either wrap the line around or turn the hook or swivel to get the wraps.
	You then pass the end of the line through the first loop, above the eye, and then through the large loop you just made, and draw the knot into shape by pulling the line.
	Keep pulling to slide the coils down tight against the eye and trim the tag and you now have a strong knot that will hold while fighting any fish.
	You can increase the strength of this knot by doubling the line.
	Thread the double line through the eye or swivel and follow the instructions above.

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As mentioned earlier there are many knots out there these are just a few of the more common knots. If you would like to learn more the following links will take you to some great sites to help you learn many more.

More fishing knots 1
More fishing knots 2
More fishing knots 3
Grog’s Fishing Knots Index