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Hot Steelhead Technique: Pulling Plugs without a Boat!

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tory_plug

Here’s a fun trick to help you catch more steelhead in small waters: Pulling plugs on foot!

I know it sounds kind funny at first, but this little trick I call “Back-Footin” is deadly effective – and highly addictive – on small streams that are tough to float and fish with traditional methods due to size and/or lots of overhanging wood and brush.

I first started fishing this way during my college years at Humboldt State University, which is a short cast from the banks of the Mad River. I didn’t have a boat in those days, but I couldn’t help but notice how the drifters working the stretch below the Blue Lake bridge with plugs boats absolutely molly-hocked those hatchery stleeies.

So, one winter when the Mad dropped out and got extremely low, I decided to wade out into a run that looked fishy (and shallow enough) and backed a lure through it, just as I’d seen the guys in the boats do. Fish on! In fact, I nailed 8 chrome hatchery brats that day and was an instant convert. I started messing around with the technique a lot after that and found it to be even more effective on really small creeks.

back_footing

As with anything, the more you do something the better at it you get. I’ve learned a lot about back-footin’ since those early days, particularly from fellow guide, river rat and buddy, Fred Contaoi, who’s also long been an aficionado of the method. Together, we’ve had some awesome days fishing this way and now I’m going to share with you the basic nuts and bolts so you can get out and try it.

Technique

Back-footin’ is pretty simple. Find a good-looking piece of steelhead holding water and get into position as far upstream of it as you can. Try to stay in a crouch to avoid spooking the fish and be careful not to dislodge any silt that will cloud up the hole.

When you’re above the spot, drop your plug into the current. Put the reel into free-spool and work the lure slowly downriver by putting pressure on the spool with your thumb. Hold the lure in place occasionally and even give the reel a forward half-crank every now and then to get the plug to slightly dart upstream.

Back footing for steelhead

When you get the plug all the way to the tailout, you can slowly crank it back through the run again – its amazing how many fish will ignore the plug the first time but hit it as it works back upstream. After a pass down and back, reel up and try a different line down through the hole. Don’t spend a ton of time at each spot – when your lure wobbles into a small pool, you’ll know pretty quickly whether or not there’s a steelie in there.

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Be advised – when you get a screaming takedown, you’ll need to clamp down on the spool with your thumb. With the reel in freespool, the spool is going to spin out of control when a fish starts running and a very ugly bird’s nest is the likely result. When you get a chance, click the reel into gear so you can fight the fish with the drag instead of burning flesh!

Lures and Baits

Okay, one of the greatest aspects of fishing this way is you don’t need a whole lot of gear. Pop a few plugs, snaps and leader material into small box and you’re in business. And you don’t have to get too crazy about your lure selection, either. Most tiny streams harbor only wild, non-discriminating steelhead and in close quarters, they’re pretty territorial. Simply put, get something in front of them and they’re likely to try to blast into shrapnel.

Steelhead Plugs

I carry a selection of Yakima Bait Co. MagLips in the 2.5 and 3.0 sizes, some No. 50 Hot Shots, and a few Brad’s Wee Wigglers and that’s it. I  replace all the stock trebles with upgraded hooks, but with small plugs you have an inherent quandary: Too much hook will overwhelm the lure and kill the action but small hooks will often get destroyed by big fish, so you have to experiment and find the happy medium for the particular lures you are using.

As far as lure colors go, pinks, chrome, gold, blue pirate and copper will cover you in just about any situation.

If you really want to get fancy (and I rarely do when back-footin’ – keep it simple, you know?) you can also run a diver/bait rig. There are times when a pink plastic worm fished behind a No. 10 Jet Diver works better than anything on the planet, but a complex rig like that can also be a major pain in tight quarters.

Gearing Up

Since you’re likely to hook some extremely hot fish in tight quarters, you’ll need a reel that can put the brakes on a fish that’s speeding towards a root wad, a rapid or tree limb. So with that in mind, don’t try this with cheesy reels. The are lots of quality reels out there — you don’t have to spend a million bucks but make sure you get one thats going to hold up to the stress you’re likely to put it through. The Daiwa Fuego is a nice mid-priced reel that will get the job done. If you want to a higher-end model, check out the Luna.

As far as rods go, you’ll need something with a soft tip to allow those small plugs to work properly but it also will need enough power to muscle fish out of the brush. My go-to stick is the Douglas Outdoors DXC 9642MF.

steelhead fishing

As far as line goes, you can go straight mono (15-pound) or 30-pound braid with a 10-foot topshot of 15-pound mono. Mono is good because it has some stretch — which comes in handy when a steelhead decides to try to rip the rod right out of your hands. However, braid is very tough and can stand up to the abuse that a big steelhead in confined quarters can dish out. It’s kind of a case-by-case judgement call for me, depending on the individual stream I’m fishing.

Safety

When fishing small streams, you’re usually walking in the water all day long, so always, always, always wear a wading belt and felt soles on your boots. Even small streams have deep spots that can get you into trouble, so move slowly and, when in doubt, use the tip of that long rod to check the depth before you pass though a spot you’re unsure about. Also, it’s a really good idea to wear an inflatable life jacket… just in case!

back footing stream

Conservation

As I stated earlier, the best back-footin’ waters are usually small creeks that hold modest runs of wild steelhead. Streams like these can’t handle much pressure and every single fish you keep accounts for a decent percentage of the population. So, killing a fish you catch with this method is really not an option — unless, of course, you’re fishing a hatchery stream there are plenty of ad-clipped fish around.

Also, as you walk downstream, pay close attention to anything that looks like a spawning area and give it a wide berth. An ill-placed footstep in the middle of a redd can wipe out a whole bunch of steelhead or salmon before they ever get a chance to grow up and smack your plug and leave it hanging from the trees…

More Information

If you want to learn more techniques, check out my book, the Ultimate Guide to Steelhead Bank Fishing.

How to Catch Big Stream Trout on Jerk Baits

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Jerk Bait BrownTo catch a big trout the next time you go stream fishing, ditch all the usual stuff — salmon eggs, small spinners and worms — and give the fish something meatier: Jerk Baits!

While aquatic invertebrates account for the bulk of the average stream trout’s diet, the largest fish in the creek prefer to dine on smaller fish. Jerk baits imitate forage fish extremely well and by using them you will see the average size of your catch go way up.

Jerk Baits

Jerk Bait is a term that refers to a wide array of minnow shaped plugs that are designed to be retrieved with a JERK-JERK-JERK-PAUSE type of retrieve. In my early days of throwing minnow baits for trout, we had a few basic ones from which to choose — chief among them were Rapalas and Rebels. Thanks to the explosion in the popularity of this technique among bass anglers, there are now more plastic baits than you could hope to try in ten trout seasons. In the warm-water world they’re often called “rip baits” and are pretty slick tools designed to solicit reaction strikes from bass. It just so happens that big trout love ‘em too!

Lucky Craft Pointer The old balsa and plastic baits I used as a kid were basically cast out and crank-in types of lures. The modern ripbait’s function is to be tossed out and retrieved with an aggressive popping (ripping) of the rod trip and cranking of the reel, punctuated with frequent pauses.

These new baits feature all kinds of fancy technology like tungsten rattles and weight transfer systems for bomb-like casting (remember the way a light wood plug would pinwheel when you’d throw it?), but the most important feature is their neutral buoyancy.

How far down these lures dive is governed by the size of the bill, but once you’ve cranked it down to its working depth and pause it, a jerk bait will hold its place in the water column. There’s no sinking or rising up like the baits of yesteryear and that’s one of the things that make these things so deadly.

The new generation of minnow baits is designed to be fished fast (though they also work well in cold water on a painfully slow retrieve), which allows you to quickly cover lots of water. Additionally, they’re adorned with some extremely sexy laser finishes and super realistic paint jobs. When you look at all the attractive attributes of rip baits, it’s easy to see why bass of all persuasions love ‘em – and it doesn’t take much critical thinking to understand why big trout also fall all over themselves for them too!

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The Best of the Best

As I noted earlier, there are dozens of companies making ripbaits – and there are a lot of really good lures out there. In fact, if you wander the aisles of your local tackle shop or flip through the pages of one of the big tackle catalogs, there’s a good chance you’ll get a little overwhelmed by all the choices. I’ve fished a bunch of different models and brands of rip baits for trout and have pretty much settled on one for most stream fishing situations: Lucky Craft’s Pointer 65.

Pointer BoxThey’re a bit pricey (typically around $14 to $16 a pop), but the little Pointer 65’s will get straight up medieval on rainbows, browns, cutties, dollies and brookies. They’ve got an erratic side-to-side darting action that I just don’t think any other lure can touch. I actually started fishing the larger versions for stripers and eventually added Pointers to my trout kit. Now, I hardly throw anything else – spinners, spoons and crawlers included.

At first glance, a 65-millimeter (2 ½ inches) lure seems kinda over-the-top in a small stream. It takes a little getting used to throwing them, but what you’re doing is targeting the biggest fish in the creek. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have to sacrifice quantity for quality as the smaller fish eat ‘em too. While the 65’s are my all-around favorites, bumping up to the Pointer 78 size is a good call on larger rivers. When fishing big browns and macks on lakes (a topic I’ll cover in a future article), Pointers as large as the 5-inch No. 128 can solicit some punishing strikes.

As far as colors go, the best advice I can give you is try to match the shades of the natural trout forage in the waters you fish. Some of my favorites include Rainbow Trout, Ghost Minnow and American Shad.

That being said, color isn’t as important in this style of fishing since the lures are moving through a trout’s territory so rapidly. The idea here is to present the bait quickly enough to a fish that he doesn’t have much time to think about things.

I run my rip baits stock out of the package with only one minor modification: I pinch the barbs, which makes releasing fish much easier. Also, be sure to tie your line direct to the bait – swivels and clips will compromise the lure’s action.

Technique

As the name “ripbait” implies, the basic technique is to “rip” the lure aggressively through the water with a combination of sharp pops of the rod tip and corresponding turns of the reel’s handle. Ideally, you fish these things from a position above the water (as in a bass boat), with the rod tip pointed down and across your body towards the water. Obviously, that’s not practical in most stream fishing situations, so a modified approach is in order. Depending on the water I’m fishing, I’ll hold the rod parallel to the water or with the tip slightly up.

Fishing a stream with jerk baitsI generally start out with a rip-rip-pause-rip-rip-rip-pause type of retrieve and then experiment from there. The fish will tell you how they want it on a given day – just keep varying your cadence until a pattern develops. And try to keep the speed up – remember, we’re looking for a reaction strike here.

When you’re tossing a ripbait in still water, the majority of the bites will come when the lure’s lying motionless on the pause. It’s a different deal, however, in moving water. You still want to throw pauses into your retrieve but they need to be a lot shorter in duration. Perhaps it’s better to think of them as “hesitations” instead, but they’re still extremely important. I think it’s that change from the darting action to the stop that really makes fish want to eat the lure.

Depending on the type of water you’re fishing, casts can be made directly up or downstream, though the down and across swing type of presentation seems to draw the most grabs.

Gear

As is the case with so many of the other “outside the box” methods I’ve written about in the past, nobody makes a technique-specific rod for throwing small rip baits for stream trout. Luckily, there are some light bass rods designed for drop-shotting and small darter heads that fit the bill pretty nicely (check out the Daiwa Aird, which is a nice stick for under $50).

Basically, you want a rod with a soft tip and a little bit of beef in the back end – something that won’t collapse on the hook set. Most of us are used to throwing hardware for trout on ultralight gear, but the standard 5 ½-foot ultralight stick is going to be way too soft for this style of fishing – and you’ll lose most of the fish you hook.

tailed brownPair the rod up with a quick-retrieve spinning reel. The Abu Garcia Revo S in a sweet reel in the $100 range, while the Orra S is still nice but a few bucks less. I usually run 6-pound mono when fishing smaller streams and then bump it up to 8- or even 10-pound on larger waters. Line with some stretch like  P-Line CX is a good choice because you want a little “give” in your mono when a trout decides to try destroy your plug.

Have Fun

In addition to being a super-effective technique for catching trout in moving water, tossing ripbaits is a total blast. The strikes are awesome and the results can be, too! So, go ahead and feed those big fish what they want…give ‘em “meat for dinner.”

Test your Salmon, Trout & Steelhead IQ

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How well do you know your trout, salmon and steelhead? Well, take this little quiz and find out — and then read on for the detailed answers…

1) Which is the rarest salmon in the world?

  1. Pinook Salmon
  2. Co-Nook Salmon
  3. Formosan salmon

2) Where might you have a chance to catch an Atlantic Salmon and a Pacific Salmon in the same day?

  1. Yuba River
  2. Lake Biakal
  3. Lake Ontario
  4. Lake Pontchartrain

3) The IGFA All-Tackle World Record for Rainbow Trout is a 48-pound triploid from Lake Diefenbaker, Canada, but the record for steelhead is a 42 pounder caught in saltwater by a salmon troller…

  1. True
  2. False

4) Where did wrapping sardine fillets onto salmon plugs originate?

  1. Chetco River
  2. Rogue River
  3. Cowlitz River
  4. Columbia River
  5. Sacramento River
  6. Kenai River
  7. Skagit River

5) Which river boat pioneer used dynamite to blast a channel through Blossom Bar on Oregon’s Rogue River?

  1. Willie Illingworth
  2. Glen Wooldridge
  3. Everett Spaulding
  4. Woodie Hindman 

6) The Kastmaster is one of the most popular lures of all time. Which of the following was the early inspiration for the modern day version?

  1. EDA Splune
  2. Sputterbuzz
  3. Souvenir Spoon
  4. Colorado Pike’s Peak

7) How far do salmon have to swim upstream from saltwater before they reach the fish ladders on the Yukon River’s Whitehorse Fishway? 

  1. 1,132 miles
  2. 1,864 miles
  3. 950.2 miles
  4. 2,117 miles

ANSWERS

1) Rarest of the Rare

Formosan salmon (answer #4) are the rarest salmon in the world and their numbers are down into the hundreds now. They are a landlocked subspecies of the Cherry Salmon, reaching about a foot in length, and occur only in a few drainages in Taiwan, including the Chichiawan Stream and the Kaoshan Stream in the upper reaches of the Tachia River.

Pinook salmon (hybrid cross of Chinook x Pink) aren’t an everyday occurrence, but they do show up now and then in Great Lakes tributaries. In fact, Michigan even keeps state records for them. Not a whole lot is known about Co-Nooks (Coho x Chinook hybrids)…in fact, some argue they don’t even exsist…so if you guessed that, you’re not totally wrong.

2) East Coast vs. West Coast

Thanks to fish farming, you really could name a 100 rivers along the West Coast where net pen escapee Atlantics rub shoulders with Pacific Salmon. Several years back, the Green River in Washington got loaded up with the buggers and it’s happening more and more. The answer I was looking for, however, was #3, Lake Ontario, where trollers sometimes cross paths with imported West Coast Salmon and planted Atlantics while dragging flutter spoons along the temperature breaks.

3) Record Steelhead

Amazingly, the long-recognized record for steelhead is a 42-pound, 2-ounce behemoth that was not taken from some well-known stream like the Babine, Skeena or Skagit. It was caught by David R. White in 1970, who was trolling the saltwater for kings at Bell Island, Alaska. Crazy, huh? Bet that was a chromer!

4) Sardine Wraps

Well, these things are always tricky to try to trace back. Since no records are kept for such things and it was long before the days of Twitter and Facebook, all we have to go on is antidotal evidence. From talking to lots of folks, including the man himself, I’m going to say that Clancy Holt at Barge Hole on the Sacramento River in the 1950’s was probably where it all began.

5) Clearing the Way

While the contributions to riverboating from all of these gentlemen can’t be ignored, Wooldridge was the man responsible for clearing a path through Blossom Bar. A true pioneer, he made the first ever float down the Rogue in a hard boat in 1915 and then made the first ascent of the river in 1947…with a prop! There’s a tough to find, but amazing to read book about his life called “The Rogue, A River to Run” by Florence Arman. If you can get your hands on a copy, you’ll love it!

6) Early Days of the Kastmaster

Not long after Art Lavallee founded the Acme Tackle Company in 1952, he became aware of a lure called the EDA Splune developed by the Engineering Design Associates of Severna Park, Maryland. Intrigued by its design, Lavallee tested and modified the lure (he made it longer and gave it its jewelry-like finish) and then signed a royalty agreement with EDA and acquired the rights to market the lure. Eventually, it became the Kastmaster and the rest, as they say is history…

7) Going the Distance!

At 1864 miles, it’s one long trek up the Yukon River to the Whitehorse Fishway, which helps salmon continue on their journey past the Whitehorse Rapids Hydroelectric Facility, built by the Canada Power Commission in the 1950s. When they get there, the weary travellers then have to ascend a 1,200-foot long fish ladder! Throwing out the “upper Yukon” above the dam, that’s a 3,728-mile round trip from Whitehorse and back!

The Steelhead’s Worst “Nightmare”

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It’s funky looking…and quite frankly, a color scheme I would never in a million years have thought about using.
It’s just too odd: red, white and black.We are so conditioned as steelheaders that pinks and oranges are our friends — and this color scheme is so outside that “norm” that it’s hard to take it seriously.

But trust me when I say that the Nightmare color pattern is aptly named – it is one heck of a steelhead producer and should be in everyone’s arsenal.

But why?

When it comes to breaking down why critters with pea-sized brains do the things they do, it’s sometimes better to just accept the facts and move on without over-analyzing the situation. But in this case, I just can’t let it go. For some reason, the steelhead’s affinity for red, black and white has my left-brain working on overdrive (which, after the college party years is running low on disk space).

Okay, here’s my best guess: The black and red portion of the Nightmare kinda makes sense to me. I guess you can say it’s a little more natural – even sorta “buggy” looking.


Less intrusive than a lot of the fluorescent colors we fish, it may be able to “sneak up” on wary fish better than the bright stuff – especially in low, clear or pressured waters – yet still provide enough attraction to get fish to bite it. Kinda makes sense, right?

The white part, however, has me stumped. The only thing I can come up with is that it provides contrast when used in concert with the other two colors.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Time to get on the phone and ask around…

First, I called the very guy who I feel has caught more steelhead on jigs than anyone I know: Nick Amato, editor of Salmon Trout Steelheader Magazine. He’s also the person who helped me catch my first steelhead on a jig a million years ago.

“Geez, I donno why they like the Nightmare color,” said Nick. “I guess it kinda looks like a bug and has some natural color shades. Plus, you have the contrast in there…but who knows really why they bite it?”

My next call was to Jimmy Davis, owner of Mad River Manufacturing. He’s pumped out a bazillion Nightmare worms from his facility and I figured maybe some of his many customers might have shed some light on the subject.

“I’m no totally sure, but the Nightmare sure seems to get their attention,” he said. “I guess it’s the contrast for one. And maybe the more natural colors.”

At that point, I was sensing a pattern, but had one more call to make. I rang up Bob Kratzer, Owner of Angler’s Guide Service on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. He fishes a ton of worms and jigs each year and is a big fan of the Nightmare. He’d surly have a good theory, right?

“Ha, ha, ha! I’ve got no idea why they eat that thing,” he said. “But it’s crazy how much they love the Nightmare. It’s gotta be the contrast and the color is more natural looking than bright pink.”

Bob also noted that a couple of his customers over the years have reported seeing natural worms in the gravel that wiggled away before being apprehended – worms that had a similar red hue to that of the Nightmare. So, there may be something to that but Bob’s never seen one himself.

After my phone work, I was feeling better that maybe my personal theories weren’t so hair-brained after all. The contrast and toned-down coloration was certainly a common theme. And that makes sense too when you consider that the consensus from my impromptu panel of experts was that the Nightmare is at its fishy best in low and clear water conditions.

But the bottomline is nobody really knows for sure why steelhead are drawn to this color pattern.

One thing’s for certain, however: steelhead love a good Nightmare!