Steelheading Without The Crowd

Posted by rusty on November 20, 2007

Well the steelhead have run into the tributaries by the thousands, and the people have followed.  One thing about steelhead fishing is that you will always run into a bunch of people, but if you are willing to walk a little bit you can get away from the crowd and still manage some fish.

My friend Philip and I recently went on a trip to Erie for some steelhead action, and so did about five hundred other people.  Most people are really into mass numbers of fish when fishing on the Erie tribs, but if you like the solitude, you can find that also.  We started fishing way upstream from the lake where we seen the least amount of cars but still caught fish.  Now if we would have fished closer to the lake we could have easily caught more fish, but there’s also more people.

A good thing to remember when your on the water is to enjoy your time fishing not just the number or size of the fish you catch(even though steelhead are HUGE)!  I’m just simply saying that if your willing to walk you can avoid a lot of crowds and still be pleased.  Philip and I brought enough steelhead to the net to make us go back.

We did most of our fishing with woolly buggers and sucker spawns of multiple colors.  I think the best producer was the olive beadhead woolly bugger.  We did try single eggs also, but they didn’t seem to work quite as well.  Most people use bait of some sort which offers good numbers of fish caught, but I enjoy the fly fishing myself.

The areas that we found fish was usually in slow to medium flow runs.  Some of the big slow pools had less fish then the runs we were fishing.  Most of the time you could see the steelhead in the river, but not always, it really depended on the amount of broken water you were fishing, since the rivers were low and clear.  Several different techniques can be used to fool these fish, so I recommend you get your fly rod(or spinning rod) and head up to Erie because it’s a blast and I’m sure you will enjoy your trip.

The only stream that we fished was Elk creek, but there’s several other streams such as Walnut and the Mile streams.  All of the tribs hold fish depending on the water flow.  This is a good year for the fish.  They are in most of the streams and a good ways upstream as well.  I think we were at least 8 miles form the lake and the fish had made it that far, probably further.  Try you luck, even if you get skunked at least you got to go fishing, and that’s always a plus.

And as for now and always “tight lines”

Rusty