10-20-23 Steelhead Day Trip

My friend booked a room for a few days in New York and invited me to join him for some steelhead fishing.  I couldn’t make the whole week, but I was able to break away from work to fish one day.   I try to fish this river as often as I can, it’s one of those places that continues to make me doubt everything I think I know about fishing.  Some days are phenomenal and other days I work my ass off and don’t even move a fish, let alone hook one.  Growing up in Pittsburgh, we fished the Erie tribs a lot and those steelhead were pretty cooperative with basic trout tactics.  Get some good presentations in prime water and you will certainly hook fish and likely good numbers of them. 

A little over a year ago I purchased a Diamondback ideal nymph in 6 weight specifically to fish this river.  I used it a lot over the past year for trout to get a feel for the rod.  I was surprised by its ability to cast delicate flies on light leaders so I was pretty confident that it would work well with a heavier set up.  My set up for this trip was almost exactly what I use for trout, except a little heavier line.  Instead of 4x sighter, I put on a spool of 2X sighter and I fished about 7 feet of 4x Tippet off the sighter.  Again, I like this set up because it’s simple, no knots going through the guides, and these euro rods have 0 issue casting just the sighter with great control. 

There were a ton of eggs in the water so I started out fishing an egg pattern and tightlining seams around the faster runs.  It didn’t take long until I hooked my first fish, it was about a 10” rainbow trout!  Not exactly what I was after but at least it’s a fish!  The rest of the day was pretty slow. I hooked into a few kings drifting through some of the softer water but broke them off as they were already turning into zombie mode. 

Egg eating Rainbow Trout

All day I changed flies, weights, colors, got absolutely great presentations and no fish.  Finally, I hooked into a nice steelhead around 2pm, this thing spent more time in the air than the water, completely chrome and fired up.  He went for a run strait downstream in the heavy current and the hooked popped off.  I brought in my rig and checked the hook, I noticed some scales on it which tells me it must have been foul hooked.  I started exploring the rest of the river and didn’t see much action from other anglers either. 

I then noticed one angler doing pretty well and hooking up consistently, I netted a few of his fish and he was nice enough to explain his rig and presentation style to me.  I copied his set up and went back to where I hooked the first steelhead of the trip.  In the next two hours, I hooked into 4 steelhead in that spot and landed one.  After thinking about the fish I netted and the one I landed, I came to the conclusion that the fish are not really eating, this set up and presentation style was great for trying to floss fish.  The one I landed had the hook in the corner of the mouth, but it penetrated from the outside going in. 

Maybe this is the norm on that river, maybe I’m just not good enough to get them to eat my fly.  Either way, it was a great learning experience but I’m going back to the drawing board.  I’m too stubborn to believe that these fish won’t eat a well-presented fly and having a presentation style that likely flosses fish is not something I want to do.  My goal is to beat these fish by making them eat on their terms, and if I can’t figure it out, I sure as hell will give it my all trying.