The Spring Steelhead Season: Part 2 - Our Approach as Anglers

For most of us that chase steelhead on the fly, we have tried and proven out techniques for fishing right through the spawning cycle. But once the spawn is over, many of these techniques are no longer effective - anglers need to keep in mind once steelhead change their behaviors, we often need to change our techniques as well.  

These fish are no longer holding in the shallow fast water or deeper holding water with quick access to spawning water. Once past spawn, there is a change in behavior and habitat use. Basically, they start to think about other things, namely food. Steelhead go on the hunt and get serious about eating and this presents anglers with an opportunity. 

One of the biggest mistakes anglers make when fishing for post spawn steelhead is to focus on drifting egg patterns. Yes, they will still produce a fish or two but in natural environments, eggs will quickly fade from the river as they either hatch or decay. Either way, eggs are not going to be available to the fish for long. Also, as mentioned earlier, the steelhead’s menu is quickly expanding as the river wakes up from winter (here’s one of my favorite patterns for drop backs). All we need to do is take advantage of this.  

This is where we come to another miss conception. That is once the steelhead finish spawning, they leave the river very quickly. In some cases, especially in the smaller rivers, this is true but not so for larger rivers like the Salmon River. At this point, the entire river now becomes the ideal habitat as they are on the hunt. This means the still backwaters even can have fish cruising around in it looking for food - depending on water flows, they can be anywhere. From this point of the season on, the more water we can cover, the more bites we will get.  We too now need to go on the hunt. The one advantage is now the fish are willing to run down a fly.  

In our next blog, we’ll walk through a technique of swinging a fly. 

Rick