How To Fish For Steelhead

Hi, I'm Gavin Hodgson, fly fishing instructor and manager of Granger's Fishing Tackle here in South Kensington, London. We're going to talk you through some of the techniques and tips to help you get started on fishing. Fishing for Steelhead has become very popular with a fly in recent years and probably the area most noted for this is British Colombia.

We have a lot of rivers that are similar to salmon rivers where fly fisherman would like to get in and wade. The best time of year to go would be early season, for the spring run in certain rivers but the autumn is what we associated mostly with steelhead fishing. We're taught mostly about fly fishing, but obviously fishing with the real eggs and things like that are done by usually local people but the tactics we use would be getting in with a fly and using pretty heavy gear.

We'll talk about the fly lines first of all and then move on to flies. Whether you're fishing single handed rod or double handed rod, needs to be considered, but for single handed rod, this multi tip line is great because it has a number of tips, and what we're normally doing is putting on a sink tip and trying to get our flies down to where the steelhead are sitting. Steelhead are going to make their way up the river at certain heights of the river, but are usually going to hug the outer shallow bends of the river rather than the deep fast flow.

So we're usually casting deep and trying to get that fly to swing in close to the bend. Close on the bottom with big flies. So we use the big lines for the big flies.

Flies as large as this are not uncommon, fished with usually a single hoop, a single hoop which is often regulated to be flat and barbed. Egg patterned, egg sucking leeches, small eggs, and even occasionally surface lures. Skating a surface lure is very exciting fishing for Atlantic salmon or steelhead; we can occasionally do well with that.

Usually, conditions are pretty good when we're fishing that way. But more often than not, it's bright color patterns because you're fishing in murky water or glacial water which is quite colored up. But it's surprising, even fish will see things like the egg pouch.

Now, techniques are down and across fishing casting down the river and letting it swing around. It must swing around and hold the fly close to the bank. And that's the area that the steelhead will take right at the end of the run.

Fly fishing, obviously we're going to use glasses, glasses for protection and glasses to hopefully help us spot fish. When it comes to wading, here's my inflatable friend, a good pair of breathable waders and good boots with a rubber sole. A lot of places now won't allow the felt soles so we're selling more rubber boots and those are good on a variety of surfaces and coupled with the breathable wader in the right size it just makes fishing comfortable and that's very important.

Obviously, a fly vest. Once you're in the river, you don't want to be carrying a bag of things so a good fly vest where you can load the pockets up with our fly boxes and everything else we need for the day it pretty much gets you out without being too cumbersome in the river. Rods wise, obviously depending on the size of the water, what would be very common would be a fourteen foot spear rod fished with a super reel.

We've got a rod which is a salt water reel and it's got a very good drag system and we fish it with either of these fly lines and a good jail spun backing and load at least two or three hundred yards. If we manage to fish on some of the smaller waters, of course, a single handed rod will be very useful and great fun. Nothing better than catching a nice fresh fish on a lighter outfit! .