Fly Fishing for Steelhead: Tips, Techniques, and Gear Explained

Timing: Mid March through May

As winter gives way to spring, the last of the winter-run steelhead make their way upriver to spawn, and in some regions, a fresh run of spring steelhead begins. This period offers a mix of opportunities, with fish that are often more spread out and less pressured.

Best Conditions: As the water gets warmer, winter steelhead begin to drop back down towards the mouth of the river and Spring steelhead migrate up during high water events. Similar to in the Fall, you’ll want to keep an eye on water conditions and begin to fish as the water drops back down to optimal conditions from a high water event. Fishing close to river mouths is often a good idea as it can sometimes put you in the mix of both drop back and fresh steelhead. 

Tactics: Swinging flies can be highly effective in the spring, especially with brighter, more colorful patterns that attract the attention of fish in clearing water. Additionally, nymphing remains a productive method, particularly in areas with higher concentrations of fish. Shallow riffles and tailouts begin to come into play again as fish are moving more rather than holding.

Indicator Nymphing

Probably the easiest technique to learn in order to hook up with a bunch of steelhead is with indicator nymphing. With constant adjustments in terminal tackle setups, it can also work in all the various water types you can encounter during a day of fishing, from shallow water riffles to deep pools. In indicator nymphing, a strike indicator is placed on the leader above the fly at a desired depth, to let you know when a fish has taken the fly. Various weighting methods can be used that take the fly to the fish below the indicator. 

A slight dip, hesitation, or an all out dunk of the indicator below the water's surface, lets you know when to set the hook, downstream. Indicators, or floats as some anglers call them, come in various sizes and shapes that can be adapted to the water type you are fishing, each offering benefits and deficiencies when put to use. 

When fishing deeper pools I like to use a tapered teardrop style indicator because it gives less resistance to a taking fish than a round, balloon shaped indicator, and can be used to get a 90 degree angle to the fly by staggering shot below it, much like the center pin angler who runs the best drift in the business of steelhead. I also like them because they point to where the fly is during the drift, telling you which way to mend the line to obtain a “dead drift” that’s a little slower than the surface current speed. Depth setting is crucial to success depending upon where the fish are holding and I’d rather start shallower and work deeper than start deep and constantly snag bottom.

How you place and set up the terminal tackle on the leader is just as important as your mending sequence and that depends on how deep the fish are holding and how fast the water is moving.

A common mistake when indicator fishing is to set everything up, your terminal tackle, your split shot, indicator placement or type, and not make adjustments while fishing. You can make a few steps up or down a pool and have to change or alter your depth by moving the indicator up or down the leader, and adding or subtracting shot.

I like round indicators when fishing fast water riffles and runs because I’m not worried about how deep I am fishing. The water is continually shallow and the take of the fly will just be a stop or hesitation of the indicator during the drift. Whenever you're presenting flies to steelhead in a tributary, with most techniques, you usually want to position yourself upstream and across from where you think steelhead are holding.

Dry Fly and Dry Fly Dropper Techniques

One of the most unobtrusive presentations you can make to steelhead in the toughest water conditions you can encounter, low, very clear water, and pressured fish, is with dry fly dropper techniques, and sometimes, (the behavior of the fish will let you know), just the dry fly by itself. It’s a standard method when fishing for inland trout, but is seldom used on Great Lakes steelhead. It can make what seem to be uncatchable fish catchable. This technique seems to work best on smaller and shallower tributaries.

During these conditions the fish have already become exposed to fishing pressure and they let you know it when an indicator or shot plops on the waters surface and they scatter. Or you cast a streamer at them and they move away from it. They’ve seen it all before. There are even times when an indicator passing over a pod of stationary steelhead will part them like Moses did with the Red Sea. When this behavior is observed, it’s time for a delicate presentation that does not spook the fish, and a dry fly dropper presentation does just that.

Here, the dry fly actually acts as your indicator, dropping gently to the surface of the water with a reach cast made from below the fish that avoids the fly line from landing on top of the fish. The dry fly delivers a little nymph or egg pattern below it. A big bushy dry fly like a size 8 or 6 Yellow Stimulator is easy to follow during the drift and has enough hollow elk or deer hair and hackle to hold up a piece of micro shot placed between the dry and dropper. This is normally needed when using an egg pattern dropper because of the slow sink rate of the fly, but not needed when using a bead head nymph. A small, black Copper John stonefly imitation gets under that dry fly quickly and has been a top producer for me, but other nymph patterns also work.

During these low water conditions you’ll be able to see how far below the surface the fish are holding and it’s at that depth where you want to place the fly. In early fall, steelhead tend to suspend in the water column and this could be just inches below the water's surface on some tributaries. I believe they do this because more current flow is found at the surface and they can intake oxygen better.

If you want to take a fish on top with just the dry fly, a down and across stream cast with the above-mentioned Stimulators or foam bodied Wakers create a V shaped wake behind the dry fly that sometimes drives the fish nuts. Current pushing a belly into the line and leader can create the V wake, but in the slower, deeper pools where steelhead are found in low water, there may be little current. When this condition is encountered, you have to create the wake yourself by moving the rod back towards you after the cast and sometimes even walking backwards to extend that wake. The steelhead will let you know if they want it when several break away from the pack and chase it down.

Recommended dry fly and dropper: 

• Dry Fly: Stimulator
• Dropper: Copper John Stonefly

Swinging Streamers

You don’t have to get all fancy with two handed rods and spey casting techniques to hook steelhead swinging streamers, but you certainly should if you’d like to. Your standard single hand 7 weight will work just fine when outfitted with sink tip, intermediate, or even floating fly lines in shallower tributaries. This is possibly the easiest and funnest technique to learn, requiring a simple downstream and across fly cast at a normal 45 degree angle. 

Depending upon how deep and fast the water is you may need to cast farther upstream, then an upstream mend or two is made that sinks the fly and lets the current form a curve or belly in the line that will sweep the fly into what you've determined to be a holding lie for steelhead. With the addition of tungsten leaders looped to the end of a floating weight forward fly line, success with swinging streamers can be obtained without having to buy a lot of new gear.

As the fly swings into slower water below you, let’s say on the inside seam of faster water, a couple of downstream mends may be needed to continue the presentation. As the fly line straightens out, let it dangle for a little bit and give the streamer a couple strips to induce a following fish to grab it. The take can be spectacular in the predatory hit response from a fish fresh from the big lake that will leave you breathless and wanting more.

Recommended Streamer:

• Woolly Bugger

Euro Nymphing

Euro nymphing is a refined, modern form of fly fishing developed throughout Europe for fly fishing competitions and has become increasingly popular in the United States. High stick nymphing and bottom bouncing are similar techniques. A Euro rig is basically a long leader (up to 30 feet long) with a multiple fly deployment incorporating a heavily weighted point fly that carries the leader with a lob cast from 15 to 30 feet away to where you think a fish's position is. Point flies are often tied with tungsten beads or a lead wire underwraping for immediate depth penetration. 

Also described as tight lining, the leader configuration incorporates a 3 foot section of hi visibility “sighter” material tied to which a tippet ring is attached. The multi colored sighter material allows you to visually follow the drift after making your standard steelhead presentation of an up and across stream cast. Using an improved clinch knot at the end of the sighter material, the tippet ring is used to attach a 5 or 6 foot section of a lighter pound test that forms the rest of the leader. (see below for complete setup). 

Because you're not casting with a traditional fly line that loads the rod and sends the line out across the river, you generally need to wade closer to where the fish take holding positions. 

After the up and across stream cast and a little slack line is given to get flies deep, the rod is lifted to an approximate 45 degree angle. Ideally, you want some, if not all in shallower water, of the sighter material lifted off the water to visually follow the drift, dropping the rod tip as the drift comes below you.

What Euro Nymphing does when compared to other techniques is that it completely minimizes drag because there is no fly line laying on the water. It also allows the presentation to follow the various bottom contours of the substrates where steelhead hold behind current breaks, which few other techniques can accomplish. 

Running Line Bottom Bouncing

This technique is the best reason to get another spool for that fly reel. Referred to as “chuck and duck”, the moniker sticks because this technique has nothing to do with actual fly casting. In fly casting, the weight of the fly line itself loads the rod on the forward and back cast. In running line bottom bouncing, the weight on the leader, in the form of lead or tungsten shot, or a slinky, carries the line, no forward cast needed.

The bottom line is though, that it’s an essential Great Lakes technique to deliver the fly, or two, in front of steelhead on big, moving water, where other techniques fail. I first learned this technique in the early 90’s on New York’s Salmon River and have since employed it with good success on Michigan’s Muskegon River and the south shore of Lake Erie’s Grand River and Cattaraugus Creek. It’s a high water technique where the volume and speed of water needs immediate depth penetration, often to freshly migrating steelhead in deep runs, pool buckets and fast riffles.

After the backing is put on your extra spool, load up with a braided monocore fly line like Cortland’s Shooting / Running Line. I like the braided core better than a straight monocore because it eliminates any stretch, handles more like a real fly line, and offers better sensitivity to the bottom when running a drift. I run 9 feet of 10lb. Maxima Green from the running line to a barrel swivel tied on with an improved clinch knot. Leave about 3 or 4 inches of the tag end hanging down on which to crimp on the shot. An overhand knot at the end of the tag can prevent the shot from sliding off. At the other end of the barrel swivel add 30 inches of 8lb. tippet and your choice of one or two flies in tandem 18 inches apart.

The amount of weight may vary for each place you fish. How much weight needed is determined by how deep and fast the water is, but you’ll know when you got it right when you can feel that tick, tick, tick of the bottom when making a drift. A slinky (shot in paracord) can also be used that is put on the leader with a snap followed by a small bead before tying on the barrel swivel. The cast is a hold of the rod over the left or right shoulder with all of the leader and a little bit of fly line hanging from the rod tip. And yes, you chuck it up and across river, mend the line a couple times, lift and get tight to it, feeling that tick, tick, tick along the bottom as the drift comes below you and you smoothly drop the rod tip. Extend the drift with slack mends. That tick, tick, tick can turn into a time bomb when a steelie grabs your fly.