Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
On small runoff rivers, steelhead sit far closer than most anglers cast. As a river clears from the bank outward, fish stack in flat shale runs two and a half to three and a half feet deep, within a rod or a rod and a half of the edge you are standing on.
Jeff Liskay is a steelhead guide based in Ohio who fishes the small runoff tributaries along the south shore of Lake Erie, from Ohio into Pennsylvania and New York.
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When do steelhead show up in Lake Erie tributaries?
Fish begin staging in the lower rivers from the end of September through Halloween. The tributaries along the south shore of Lake Erie are runoff rivers, meaning they depend entirely on precipitation or snowmelt to bring fish up, so the schedule is never fixed. Things reliably start rolling around the third week of October and keep improving as flows build through the season.
What are the six decisions a steelhead angler makes each day?
The framework is six checkpoints, reassessed daily or hourly. Angling method comes first: swung fly or not, big fly or small. Then where to start, which means checking stream gauge flows in cubic feet per second, since one river can be muddy while another 60 or 80 miles away is perfect. Then how fast to move off a hole, then where to go next, since fishing multiple rivers and even multiple states in a day is normal. Angling pressure is the most important of the six, and the last is the pattern for the day, which usually resolves by about 10 a.m. into whether fish are sitting in the heads or the tailouts.
What water clarity should you look for on a runoff river?
The clarity target is simple to check with your own feet: standing in knee-deep water, you should barely be able to see your boots. Clearer than that and the fishing gets tough; dirtier than that and it gets tough in the other direction. Water with a foot of visibility or less counts as dirty and is generally avoided, though on a runoff system there are stretches of the season where there is no avoiding it.
Where do steelhead hold in dirty water?
Steelhead in dirty water are much closer to the bank than most anglers assume, generally within a rod or a rod and a half of the edge. Runoff rivers clear from the bank outward, because particulates drop out there first, so instead of sitting in holes the fish move up onto flat shale in the shallow runs, in water roughly two and a half to three and a half feet deep. As the river recedes and clears, those fish drop back into the buckets. Not catching in dirty water usually means fishing the wrong place, not the wrong fly. When it is dirty, go big in profile and dark in color, favoring black, purple and blue combinations, and slow the tempo down.
Should you fish a dry fly for steelhead in low clear water?
Yes, and it should be the first thing you try. Great Lakes steelhead are migratory rainbows and behave like trout, and in low clear water with temperatures in the 50s they have unlimited visibility and will look up. Low clear conditions also give an angler feedback that dirty water cannot: you can watch a fish either bolt under the undercut bank or come out and chase, which tells you whether to change flies or downsize. When one fish in a pool starts getting trouty and looking up, the other fish react and competition takes over.
How do you break down a run you have never fished?
Divide by three, twice. First divide the whole river from headwaters to the lake and pick the section with the most bends, because bends produce the most holding and spawning water. On an unfamiliar system, start low looking for bright fish, move to the midsection when pressure pushes you out, and typically hit all three sections by noon before committing to the best one for the afternoon. Then divide each run into head, gut and tailout. Because of water temperature, steelhead generally use only two of those three at any given time, either the head and gut or the gut and tailout, which eliminates a third of the water before the first cast.
How heavy should your sink tip be for swinging steelhead?
Water temperature dictates how far a steelhead will chase, and 40 degrees is the threshold where a fish will actually pull off its holding spot and move aggressively for a fly. In colder water, run more weight, and use rod position rather than tip changes to control depth: fish with the rod high so you can lower it to step the fly into deeper grooves and buckets, then raise it to lift the fly as you swing toward the bank. The field test is the dangle. Let the fly hang on your wading line; if it does not reach bottom or snag, the tip is right, and if it tanks on the bottom, it is too heavy. Ten-foot tips at a 2.4 sink rate cover average flows, and above roughly 400 cubic feet per second a 3.5 sink rate takes over.
How do you steer a Skagit head on a swung fly?
Think of the head as a long bobber rather than a round indicator, with the angler as the captain steering the ship. The back of the Skagit head works as a rudder: reposition it and let the head fish the fly, rather than engaging and pulling on the fly directly, which closes up the materials and costs grabs. Give a little more downstream angle when fish want more chase, and set a big upstream mend so the fly creeps through tail first when they want it slow and in their face. Overcasting undoes all of it. With the head off the rod tip, the end of the running line loop from reel to hand should match the rod tip, which is already a long cast; bombing a full cross-river cast on a small runoff river lands the fly in six inches of water when the fish are mid-river to inside.
What rod and grain weight works on small steelhead rivers?
Single-hand rods with an aggressive weight-forward line and sinking leaders will work, but the standard on these rivers is a Skagit head on a switch rod under 12 feet, because runoff rivers demand turning over large flies in gritty water. An 11-foot 5-weight is the go-to, with a favored grain weight around 330. Blending Scandi and Skagit casting, using single spey, touch-and-go and snake roll casts instead of committing to fixed-anchor waterborne casts every time, speeds up progression enough to fish four or five more runs in a day.
Key takeaways
- Check stream gauge flows in cubic feet per second before choosing a river; neighboring systems 60 to 80 miles apart can be muddy and perfect on the same day.
- Aim for water where you can barely see your boots in knee-deep water; a foot of visibility or less is too dirty.
- In dirty water fish within a rod and a half of the bank, in flat shale runs two and a half to three and a half feet deep.
- Start with a dry fly in low clear water when temperatures are in the 50s; Great Lakes steelhead are migratory rainbows and will look up.
- Use the dangle test for tip weight: hanging on your wading line the fly should reach down without tanking on the bottom.
- Run 10-foot tips at 2.4 sink rate for average flows and move to 3.5 above about 400 cubic feet per second.
- Match your cast to the running line loop from reel to hand; anything longer costs fly control on small rivers.
