Fishing vertically with light line and light jigs  creates line twist. Right? You reel in, the jig spins. You drop the jig, it spirals. But the joker in the deck is that spinning reel on your rod handle.

The rod in the photo is one of the new Tony Roach Signature Series panfish rods fromWright & McGill. The center-pin-style reel, also new from Wright & McGill, has no bail, no line-gathering device, no “passes,”and no twist. Fishing all winter with this unit spooled with 4-pound Seaguar Tatsu Fluorocarbon. Tatsu is more manageable than  most fluorocarbons, but all are stiffer than a good, limp mono. But fluorocarbon doesn’t twist on this new fly-reel style equipment coming out in 2014. These reels have a quality star drag and multiplying gears, but it’s the direct retrieve that makes fishing with fluorocarbon in cold weather trouble free.

Not that the weather was cold the other day. As mentioned in the previous post, it was over 70°F. The 25-mph winds were the only reason we weren’t stripped down to t-shirts. I got my first really painful sunburn of the year.

My first experience with fly-reel style ice reels was provided by the Thorne Brothers 13 Fishing Series rods and reels. The rods have plenty of play, but performed admirably when setting hooks and fighting bull gills away from wood cover and remaining stands of green cabbage. Fighting big gills is plenty of fun with this kind of setup, especially with the longer units with big bends.

Wright & McGill will be releasing a variety of panfish rods next season. The one in the photo above is almost a deadstick-style rod, with a whippy tip that replaces spring bobbers. Bluegills and light-biting crappies can bend the last 8 inches of this stick straight down before they feel anything at all. Actually works better than a spring bobber because, once they bend it that far, the blank blends quickly into a section with plenty of backbone for setting hooks and moving fish.

As mentioned in that previous post, we were finding bluegills all through the water column. I began catching them 3 feet under the first hole I walked up to, which was drilled over 14 feet of water. When you only have 5 feet of line out, the forgiving tip on that rod becomes a huge advantage. Suicidal, kamikaze bluegills weighing  a pound or more can snap fluorocarbon pretty quick with so little shock absorption being provided by such a short line.

But why were  these bruiser bluegills spread throughout the entire water column?

If you trace our steps back to early winter, when Shoggie and I were fishing this same lake for bluegills while setting tip-ups for big pike, you’ll remember we could only catch bluegills up to a point several minutes before a flag popped up—and only within 5 feet or so of a big pile of sunken timber. Underwater cameras revealed that, the moment a big toothy appeared, bluegills ducked back into the wood.

This time of year, the big toothies are focused on sex. They’re either running up incoming creeks or filtering into shallow bays and connecting wetlands to spawn. So, not only will bluegills and crappies come out to play—they take over. In the same lake, bluegills were hundreds of yards from the nearest cover, scattered throughout the water column, and the only pike we caught were hammer handles in the 20- to 24-inch range.

But we did expect to catch more bass. Shoggie’s lake is full of big largies. Where were they? Just like bluegills (which are pretty close relatives to largemouths), bass become increasingly active during warming trends in spring. (And they bite the same things, triggering far better on tiny baits than the sizes that trip them up most consistently from late spring through early winter.) When air temperatures above the ice are warm, those bands of 34°F water below the ice contract toward the surface. Whether you’re fishing for panfish, bass, walleyes, or pike—there’s something magic about that 36°F temperature band. Look for more on that topic in next year’s Winter Issue of In-Fisherman magazine.

Bluegills exhibit exotic and varied color schemes. Never ceases to amaze me how many different patterns can be seen in the course of a day spent panfishing—especially when you’re catching them all day long.

Yesterday was one of those days, but we were quickly running low on bait. The local convenience store was almost out of waxworms and nobody carries maggots around here during “limbo,” which is a segment of that period of ice time remaining after the walleye season closes. For a few weeks, store managers carry maggots, but in the final week or two of the ice season—every year—they stop ordering what some still call Euro-larvae. Faintly reminiscent of the fashion world, which insists on putting swimwear on display before all the snow has melted from the woods around here. A more utilitarian approach might actually be to sell what people can actually use at the moment, but what do I know? I’m just a word bender.

“A small piece of nightcrawler isn’t working as well as the waxies,” Shoggie said (guide David Shogren, 218/765-3197). One waxworm, threaded onto the hook of a TC Tackle Girdle Bug (TC Tackle: 406/683-5485) or the smallest Lindy Fat Boy was working really well, but we were down to our final baits.

“Never fear. We shouldn’t need bait for a bite like this,” I said, threading on a white Gulp! Fish Fry, a mousie-style panfish bait with a thin, pointed tail. It worked fine, but after 20 minutes or so I noticed I wasn’t catching any more of those porkers like Ricky Hammer’s holding up in the adjacent photo.

Then Hammer popped the biggest brute of the day, and announced he was using an Original Fish Formula ScrewTail Worm, which is shaped a lot like the Fish Fry. It’s a cylindrical worm with a smaller diameter cylindrical tail. The nervous energy in a thin tail is the key to catching panfish with plastics—especially when fishing vertically through the ice.

Jig it abruptly just under the surface a few times. If it keeps quivering on the pause, you’ve probably found a winner. That’s what livebait does. It’s why ice-fishing guru and hall-of-fame angler Dave Genz insists on replacing those maggots every few minutes. “If it’s not wriggling a little on the pause, it’s no longer doing it’s job and you need to get some fresh bait on there,” he says. Thin, tapering plastic tails, like the ones found on Custom Jigs & Spins Wedgies and Northland’s Slug Bugs, keep quivering on the pause. I think panfish see it as something alive.

I began playing with different styles from different companies, but kept coming back to those mousie shapes with the little rattails. White or pink seemed to be the most popular with the Lepomis macrochirus crowd the other day. Soft plastics in the 1- to 2-inch range generally work best for gills, but I was cutting mine back to about 3/4-inch or even shorter. The “mousie shape,” like the Slug Bug, surprisingly, acts like a sail on a flat-sided jig like the Fat Boy. Using 4-pound Seaguar Tatsu Fluorocarbon, I could get the combo to spiral on the drop—something I couldn’t achieve using only livebait. The spiral had a 7-inch diameter, providing a unique look that I’m sure had a lot to do with some of the vicious strikes I was getting. Bluegills were winding up and trying to kill these things—sometimes swallowing the jig on the strike.

I was playing with various kinds of rods, too, in preparation for next year’s Ice Guide. Maybe we’ll discuss those next time. Or maybe the topic will be bluegill behavior and seasonal movements this time of year. Maybe I’ll go steelheading tomorrow. Could look for crappies before the ice rots. Depends on how the mood strikes me.

Looking at my photo library and fishing logs from last year at this time, I see we were running the Mississippi River in our 17-foot Alumacraft, fishing bluegills and crappies in open backwaters beginning just after mid April. Driving north today, I could see Rice Lake was still completely frozen over, meaning the backwaters would also be roofed with ice.

Every lake I passed was frozen solid. A pair of herons stood on the ice near a space that had opened as the ice pulled away, still just a few feet from solid ground. 

I pulled into a diner where Dave “Shoggie” Shogren (walleye-panfish-pike guide, 218/765-3197) and my old friend Rick Hammer were waiting for me at the breakfast bar. We had a long, animated discussion on the fate of Mille Lacs smallmouth bass (future posts coming), the gradual decline of walleyes in our neck of the woods, and the immense stupidity of fracking while wolfing down eggs, bacon, and coffee.

We were on our way to a nearby lake not really open to the public. One of what we call the Shoggie Lakes. Having lived in this area since birth, Shoggie knows everybody and every body of water.

Pretty soon we were a caravan of three trucks, snaking ever deeper into the forest. We parked at a summer home of some friends and walked in. The lake is small, so the hike was probably less than half a mile to a cluster of holes Shoggie made several weeks ago. No need to make more. We didn’t even bring an auger. Temperatures are (finally) warming into the 30°F range at night, and even holes that froze over two weeks ago were opening up.

Shoggie and I didn’t bring depth finders. Hammer brought his Marcum Showdown Digital Flasher, which proved that the optimum depth was 14 feet. Otherwise, we really didn’t need sonar. I must have stayed at the first hole I tried (which just happened to be over 14-foot depths) for two hours.

Waxworms were the only grub-like baits we could find, but I boldly predicted the biggest fish would come on plastics. In my late-ice experiences (also chronicled last year in this space), plastics don’t always catch more panfish than bait (though they often do), but almost always trigger larger fish. Again—that’s just been my experience. Especially during late-spring warming trends. Every northern panfish freak knows that t-shirt days on ice are crazy. Fish practically swim up through the holes and attack before you can finish baiting the hook. This was one of those days.

The high today was about 72°F where we were fishing. The wind (with gusts up to 25 mph) across the ice kept us cool. We had no shelters. Just knee boots, buckets, and a rod or two.

It was one of those magic late-ice days we all look forward to during winter. Bluegills were attacking almost anything with a ferocity unmatched in at least six months. Almost anything. Discrimination, at this point, is interesting. Just what is it they really want? Anybody who knows me very well at all knows I think the best time to experiment is during a hot bite. And experiment we did! More tomorrow…

Not a big specimen, by anyone’s standards, but look how pristine and healthy she is. Steelhead from Lake Superior seldom have marks from commercial nets, deformed mouths from previous run-ins with fishermen, or scars of any kind. No sea lions or sharks to worry about. No muskies, very few pike. Since so few anglers know how to find them out in Superior, ospreys might comprise the most troublesome predatory influence for steelhead in one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes (I learned this week that Superior holds something like 9% of the world’s surface supply of fresh water.)

The largest predators in Lake Superior are lake trout. To eat the specimen I’m holding, a laker would have to weigh 25 pounds or more. Plenty of lakers in Superior exceed 25 pounds, but few would be fast enough to make a steady diet of onchorynchys mykiss.

Just how fast is a steelhead? Rick Hammer asked that question one year as we sat around a fireplace sipping cocktails at our annual Steelhead Camp. Mike “McTrout” McLeod said, “Twenty six feet per second.” Hammer thought that sounded ridiculous. The next morning, McTrout and I stood on the bank, comparing hooks, and Hammer hooked up directly below us. The silver missile leapt, pointing downstream. Within a few seconds it leapt again, about 50 feet upstream. It happened so fast, Hammer’s line was still pointing downstream. The line then ripped out of the water, sizzling upriver like a fast-burning fuse just as the fish leapt again—several yards downstream of Hammer, whose head was on a swivel, snapping left-right-left. Over the next minute or so, I don’t believe the line was ever pointing to the spot where the fish actually was. When his line finally snapped it sounded like a gun shot.

Hammer slumped. He turned to us, mouth still agape. “What was that?”

“Twenty six feet per second,” McTrout drolled. I still don’t know where he got that statistic, but I can tell you this: The fish Hammer hooked was moving exponentially faster than the 23 mph attributed to rainbow trout by  WikiAnswers. Info.com is even worse, somehow clocking “trout” at 24 km per hour. Another site claims salmon can swim at 45 km per hour (technically, rainbow trout are pacific salmon, as indicated by the designation onchorynchus, but based on my experiences with each, I tend to believe steelhead are faster than kings, silvers, chums, etc. And quite a bit faster than brown trout.)

In-Fisherman ran a comparative chart years ago that claimed steelhead could swim at 35 mph, but that’s probably an educated guess from a steelhead fisheries manager that tried to clock one with a speed gun. Personally, I think the only way to know for certain is to have an orca chase one past a radar station.

Dolphins are, of course, mammals, not fish, but they’re probably the fastest things in the sea. Certain species of shark are among the fastest fish in the sea. Like tuna, they can purportedly achieve bursts of 50 mph or so. (Some sites say bluefins can hit 80 mph for short bursts.) Dolphins are known to attack sharks by circling underneath to ram them in the belly. Sharks are more likely to fear dolphins than the other way around.

Anyway, it’s all conjecture. I don’t think anyone has adequately clocked a truly motivated steelhead—one being chased by a huge predator. But 35 mph, underwater, is plenty fast. Put it this way: Whatever the top-end speed steelhead can achieve is, it’s fast enough to give Hammer whiplash.

This shot was taken about 24 hours ago, as I write this on April 24. We ventured up to the South Shore of Superior intending to visit three different rivers. The weather had different plans for us.

After getting a foot of snow last Friday, the area was blasted with another 11 inches Monday night while Mary and I slept in our motel room (which we affectionately refer to as Steelhead Cave North).

We peeked out the window before dawn and couldn’t tell by looking it was our truck parked in front of the room. Too much of it was buried in snow. So we went back to bed, knowing our plans to visit three rivers on backcountry roads was wildly optimistic.

By 11 am, just fishing one river seemed like asking too much. Snow was so deep in the parking areas we passed several of them by. Then got stuck trying to enter a third. Twenty minutes later we were back on the road, feeling like sparrows over the Atlantic, looking for a safe place to light.

We finally settled on an area I’m not very familiar with because it had a snow-free parking spot. Soon we were trudging through knee- to hip-deep snow, finding buried logs with our feet and ankles, leaning on our wading staffs to keep from planting our faces in the snow.

The “road holes” were well populated, but anywhere farther than 100 yards from the road, no trails were broken. Even the deer were reluctant to move.

Ducks of every species went whizzing by, making a considerable racket, spooking fish every time we appeared out of the frozen background to their scene of exile. They’re crowding to the rivers because they have no other options. Not only lakes but small ponds that usually open by now remain frozen. Surprised herons and egrets went flopping past. We saw at least one gray owl, which should be far to the north by now.

Steelhead were still camping out in the widest, slowest pools, the females fat, healthy, and bulging with eggs. All but one. Mary banked one hen that was spawned out. Hmm. Water temperatures haven’t exceeded 35°F since the season opened on the last Saturday in March, but after seeing that skinny hen I labored upriver through heavy snow to find some spawning gravel. The water was up, cloudy, and ice cold from the previous night’s heavy snowfall, but I finally spotted a pair of ghosts working the gravel. I watched, but otherwise left them alone to augment our fishing a few years from now.

Most biologists will tell you steelhead spawn in water temperatures of 41°F or so. And, all things being perfect, that’s when spawning activity will peak. But when nature throws them a serious knuckleball, like this protracted winter scenario we’re dealing with, day length comes into play. Survivors pass on their genes. Those that spawn too late in the game, calendar wise, may not have any progeny survive the following winter.

Steelhead need to be born within a certain window of time, long enough after winter passes so that the chances of anchor ice forming and killing the eggs or hatchlings are slim, but not too late. When steelhead spawn late, chances for problems increase. The young-of-the-year might be too small when the next winter arrives.

Studies indicate that steelhead mark time with “day length.” As daylight increases each day in spring, the period between sunrise and sunset eventually reaches a point that triggers the need to spawn. Where steelhead are native to a system, and their internal clocks are tuned in to the diurnal rhythms of that latitude, researchers  have noted that parr smolt on the same calendar dates every year.

Nature provides steelhead with other dictums, too. Such as, “Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket.” The spawn is spread out over time, so disasters like floods or eruptions (see Mount St. Helens) are less likely to wipe out entire year classes.

The fish might be getting antsy, some of them pushing their normal boundaries in this abnormal weather pattern. But what a wonderfully wacky spring for us fishermen. With each thaw, another squadron of silver fish slips upstream. And with each new snow event and cold front, those fish settle into pools to wait for us to come trudging through the snow to a river too far, but well worth it.

April is two thirds gone and we just received 12 inches of fresh snow overnight. That storm came on the heels of one that left 8 inches, which was riding on the heels of another. This week, the weatherman says we can expect yet another winter storm.

Talked to Tony Roach today. We’ve been trying to get on the ice for some saucer-sized bluegills for several weeks. We make plans and a storm buries our little lakes in deep, heavy, wet snow. Then it thaws, but before the ice can bend skyward again and the slush disappears we get another blinding blizzard with deep accumulations. What to do? Not staying inside, no matter how many articles the world’s fishing magazines throw in my direction.

You’ve heard all about making lemonade when the world buries you with lemons. So, when the universe sends unreasonable, unrelenting winter, go steelheading.

The conditions that make ice fishing all but impossible are favorable for steelhead fishing. Snow fall keeps the water high but cold, so steelhead sit in pools and wait. Every thaw brings silt and sediment into the flow from tributaries, which also works in your favor. Steelhead are more aggressive in slightly cloudy water. A foot of visibility is close to ideal, because cold water pushes steelhead toward slower segments of the stream, where they have time to react.

As discussed a few posts back, high water moves steelhead into segments of stream they otherwise wouldn’t use. Case in point: This past week I ventured up to Minnesota’s North Shore on Lake Superior. At the end of a long, hard day of trudging through slippery snow over hard-packed ice, I felt lucky to have beached 5 nice steelhead. On my way back to the car I stopped below an island, at a confluence pool that has produced, at best, one steelie for me in the past 10 years. But now the water’s up a foot or more above normal flow levels. The pool is wide and normally shallow but running about 4 feet deep. A classic wintering pool. Where the river widens, it slows. Wide. relatively shallow pools allow steelhead to feel some sun on their backs while maintaining maximum distance from those threatening banks where they see monsters like me—or maybe a bear, a raccoon, or something worse.

It was one of those odd pools, where the deepest water is on the inside of the bend—where I was standing. A tangle of logs commanded the tip of the point just below me. I simply dropped the float into the flow at the end of my rod tip and let it slowly track within 5 feet of the wood pile. The float disappeared. The fish broached, thrashed, dove, and rounded the bend.

It was too deep next to the wood pile to follow the fish around it. So I reached out toward mid river with my 12-foot float rod and held on. I’ve described the physics involved many times: The pressure eventually turns the face of the fish outward, where the current is employed as an ally. It brings the fish toward the rod tip whether it wants to go that way or not.

Eventually I teased it to me. For a Lake Superior fish, it was a real beauty—a 28.5 incher, meaning it probably weighed about 8.5 pounds. My biggest fish of the day. And, as I continued to work my way across the river, each cast a little longer than the last, I found two more steelhead and a nice stream brown.

Since that hole produces about one fish a decade for me, I may not hook another there until after 2050. Unless the weather conspires to create similar conditions. But this has been the longest, most extended spring steelhead season for quite some time. And it looks like it’s going to last at least two more weeks.

You won’t hear me complaining.

Frost covers the ground before day break. A history of air temperatures and the recent disappearance of snow tells the story: It hasn’t started yet.

“It” is a migration. Brown trout begin migrating away from winter sites as water temperatures climb above 44°F or so. If recent air temperatures have averaged 45°F or less throughout the previous week, chances are good browns are just nosing out of wintering holes in the mother ship.

The mother ship is a bigger river, a lake, or a reservoir below the streams where they spend the summer. Browns spawn on gravel in those streams in October, November, sometimes later, then they migrate down to slower, deeper, wider pools or lakes, especially in the North. Sometimes those wintering pools are in the same stream browns spend the summer in. Sometimes not.

Big browns save energy. They don’t fight a lot of current during the winter months, which are stressful and generally represent a time of stasis, or zero growth. Lakes, Great Lakes, and reservoirs offer the best strategies for growing monstrous browns.

I like it when “it” hasn’t happened yet. Browns are down in areas most trout fishermen don’t even think of as “trout water” It’s slow. It’s cloudy. Smallmouths, walleyes, and pike take turns ruling there in summer.

By the time water temperatures reach 60°F or so, browns are close to the areas where they’ll spend the remainder of summer and early fall, hiding under impossible tangles of wood. So everything between 44°F and 60°F in spring tends to define a time of transition.

Most trout seasons open during early April in the North. In the past, I could count on snow-covered banks keeping water temperatures below 40°F for a week or three after the opener in Northern Michigan, meaning the biggest browns would be in slow water uncharacteristic of trout way downstream of the maddening crowds that insist trout be where they “always are.”

Waxworms on a small jig under a stream float or a well-tied nymph under a strike indicator can be extremely effective for cold-water trout. I tend to use small, sensitive floats on light line with thin fluorocarbon leaders beneath them in slow water. I use an 11-foot ultralight G. Loomis float rod designed to protect 4-pound leaders. I tie jigs or hooks to a 3- to 4-foot segment of 4-pound Raven Fluorocarbon beneath the float.

Cold mornings are a good thing. And this year, we’ve got snow all over the banks on my favorite trout streams. Whoopee!

Rivers are climbing over their banks and invading our forests at the behest of the Chocolate Beast. The Beast comes around most years at spring time, and is best exemplified by high water carrying lots of sediment, resulting in less than 6 inches of visibility.

With a six-inch window of visibility in front of your face, what would you do? Run down the middle of Main Street? Stroll confidently down the sidewalk? Play a game of pickup basketball? Right. Here’s what you would do: Shut down, hide, and wait. If you had a really hot date planned, you might start hours early and inch your way there, clinging to hand rails and edging along buildings wherever you could.

Steelhead, which are apparently less stupid than about 90% of the angling public thinks they are, won’t be running down Main Street when the Chocolate Beast hits town either. Good way to get smacked with a log. They’ll be on the sidewalks. On the edge closest to the main part of the lawn. In the thinnest water you’ll find them in all year.

Truth is, you’ve probably never experienced six inches of visibility for any extended period of time, while steelhead do it somewhere—maybe “mostwheres”—every spring. Out the window, I see 3 or 4 more inches of snow piling on top of the 5 inches we received early yesterday morning. It’s melting fast. In other regions, the precip came down as rain. As I peruse the USGS flow charts for rivers across the Great Lakes region, I see the footprints of the Chocolate Beast everywhere I look. I circle the spots it hasn’t reached yet, pack up and head in that direction. Still—I’ll be faced with high water.

Our friend Stan Blood wrote to me this week. Said he and Jim Hummel were planning on climbing aboard the SS Sidney and drifting some rivers, but he was worried about water levels. Here was my reply:

When the water’s up in spring, one of the spots where I’ve done really well is the stretch between Hommina Hommina and the next bend upstream (1/6 mile up or so). I know, I know—it’s “shallow.” But:

A/ There’s gravel there.

B/ When the water’s up, it’s plenty deep.

C/ When the water’s normal, it’s “nothing water,” so everybody ignores it, even guides, because they’re not accustomed to fishing there—never caught a fish there.

One of many, many such spots I know of where steelhead hold in high water and where nobody else ever seems to bother them..

Like the tailout of Back of Beyond, way down there, where nobody ever fishes because it’s too thin in most conditions. But, when the water’s up, it’s just right. Has gravel.

Think about spots like that and you’ll do better than anyone else on the river. Even guides often get trapped by thinking the best spots are relatively the same no matter what the conditions are. In high water, fish where you normally wouldn’t. Fish where your mind is trying to tell you it’s too shallow.

I relish high water until it develops into the Chocolate Beast, because it puts fish in positions where other people want to stand, in parts of holes and runs fish never otherwise use—in entire stretches of river the fish never otherwise use.

Go to the bend below the Cedars of Hammertime (can’t touch this….). From there all the way down to the next bend. Every drift boat will float right on through there, because you can normally see bottom all the way across, but it can be packed with steelhead this time of year.

High water is tough for a lot of people, ’cause they look for love in all the wrong places.

(I realize most of you don’t know where the Hommina Hommina Hole, or the Back of Beyond is. But that’s ok. Stan does.)
 

Mary Savage admires the silver sides and pink highlights of another nice one. Marine olive backs and multiple black spots. Pristine— untouched by other hooks or commercial nets. Plump and sassy, fresh from big water, aiming to kick ass and take names all the way to the spawning gravel—if that’s what it takes.

And that spawning gravel could be 50 miles away or more, far into the realm of balsam, cedar, thin water, and rivulets, in trackless stretches where few people go.

So we let her go. We always let her go on streams where natural reproduction occurs. Even when it’s only a rumor.

Mary pops another, standing on the remnants of a harsh winter. Harsh winters can kill steelhead. Dr. Paul Seelbach participated in a study that revealed a direct correlation between the number of days with anchor ice and the survival of steelhead parr through the winter. Anchor ice forms along the bottom of a stream, locking up the invertebrate food supply. It forms in air temperatures below 0°F, which can super-chill rivers. I’ve taken water temperatures readings of 31°F on several occasions during the months of January and February, when air temperatures hovered near 0°F. Weather that cold manifests itself in ice floes forming on the surface (where water meets the super-chilled air) and anchor ice forming on bottom (where currents are slowest).

Seelbach proposed it’s possible to determine the percentage of a year class that will survive the winter by counting the number of nights that dive to sub-zero temperatures. Up here, on the tributaries of Lake Superior, temperatures often plunge to minus 20°F during the coldest months of the year.

Which makes you thankful for the small fish. Let ‘em go. Let ‘em grow.

Notice how red the tag alder is? Mornings have been cold, but the afternoon sun is activating plant growth, creating snow and ice melt, sending water levels upward, and driving intelligent anglers upstream.

Creeks rise, carry muddy water, and dump it into the river. The farther downstream you go, the cloudier the water gets. So the reverse is true, suggesting a sojourn upstream, where trout can see whatever you’re offering from a greater distance.

The previous post revolved around color selection in spring conditions, when water is often rising or higher than normal. In spring the goal is often described as creating a visible target, but the “tightline” is a matter of size: How big of a target will they accept?

The answer, often enough, is “surprisingly big” in rising, cloudy water. As examined here in the past few months, steelhead will take hair jigs, flies, and minnowbaits in excess of 5 inches long even in low, clear water. But those presentations are actively worked, triggering through reflex. Float fishing is different. It’s a form of seduction. Steelhead can swim along with one of our presentations for 100 feet—often twice that.

Vision is only a small part of the equation. Triggering scents, motions, profiles, displacement, and other factors come into play. The discussion on triggering strikes from steelhead by teasing a certain action through puppetry with a float is long, and deserves an article in print.

The discussion on optimum size is equally important. Lures and flies that trigger with size, flash, thump, and water displacement can be much bigger than anything presented in a manner that might be called natural. Natural presentations drift at the speed of the current in that segment of the water column that the bait is travelling in. Not, in other words, at speeds exhibited by the current on top of the stream. Where the float is.

Which suggests manipulation. Steelhead can stare at objects suspended under floats for much longer periods of time. And the things being duplicated by whatever is being drifted under a float are not expected to snap forward, speed up excessively, jerk, or otherwise misbehave. Worms, nymphs, free-drifting eggs and such are somewhat to severely limited in mobility. Best to keep motion to low-energy quivering and twitching.

Did I mention how important puppetry can be? A deft hand at long-distance line and float control is the 10% solution. A dead drift at current speed is the 90% solution. Still, 10% means 10 more steelhead over every 100 opportunities.

If the water is too cloudy, head upstream, above inflowing creeks, monitoring clarity at bridges and along river drives on the way. I stop when I can see my foot 18 inches to 2 feet below the surface. Nice to have some cloudiness. Steelhead allow you to approach much closer. If they can’t see you, you don’t exist.