By Robert R Smith
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 but 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.
Steelhead, Salmon and Trout Fishing has been a passion of mine since I was a young boy. Most of my free time was spent on lakes and streams here in the northwest, and I have picked up on some interesting facts about fishing for these species over the last 45 years. I would like to share them with you through articles and at my websites I hope you find them helpful and enjoyable. So please stop by check out some information or just stock up on your fishing gear. Hope to see you on the river!
RR Smith
http://www.steelheadangler.savings-direct.com For all your Steelhead/Salmon fishing needs
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