Patience Is The Soul Of Winter Steel

If the pool is 4 feet deep and slow, the lead length between bait and float might start at 3 feet. After covering the pool once, I extend it a few inches at a time until it reaches 4 feet. If the current is somewhat faster, my lead length might end up at 5 or 6 feet, because I’m constantly “checking” the float, allowing the current to carry the tiny jig and flow-resistant bait out ahead of the float several feet. In winter, the slower the bait travels the better, and it is rarely advisable to simply let the float drift at surface speed. Surface speed always exceeds bottom speed, and the closer the bait comes to traveling at bottom speed (which is almost no speed at all, most of the time), the better off you are.

The first cast is no cast at all. Just reach out with a 10- to 13-foot rod and drop the float in the flow. Each successive drop, flip, or cast should carry the float progressively farther toward the center of the pool by a matter of inches. That’s where patience comes in.

On Being Methodical

The problem is day length. The classic window for the best bite is 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., but a dilemma arises from the hour or more needed to really cover a good pool on a midsized river. Standing around in one spot for an hour can get mighty cold; when it does, walk to the next pool and come back later to finish up.

A guided trip on a driftboat during January or February in Michigan, New York, or Wisconsin can be the coldest fishing on earth. Being trapped on a boat with no chance to walk around is brutal when the air or windchill dips below 20°F. I prefer to walk. A stroll to the next pool warms fingers, feet, and legs, making you a better fisherman when you arrive. Better for your heart, better for your overall health, and far better for your catch-rate. On truly big rivers, jet boats and drift boats cover water much better, however.

Winter steelhead can be picky creatures. Color can be critical, so play with it every 20 minutes or so. A float can drift over a spot 20 times, only to jet under the surface on try number 21 during winter. Precise depth control, size, speed, and color can be critical, and can change every day if not every hour. But method means nothing without patience.

The plan should be to carefully target an area with 2 to 5 pools relatively close together, which you know or suspect to hold fish during winter. After a careful selection process, the chosen pools should be worked for a long, long time, from one bank to the other and back again, and then worked again with other baits, other colors, and other sizes. It takes a tremendous amount of patience, especially when the cold becomes uncomfortable.

Don’t shiver. Wear long underwear that wicks moisture, like polypropylene. Wear a T-shirt or longsleeved tee over that, followed by a thick sweater, hooded sweatshirt, your vest, and an outer rain shell to block wind and keep you dry. Wear fleece wading pants under relatively heavy boot-foot neoprene waders. Have fingerless gloves for fishing and regular fleece gloves for walking or resting. Carry a stocking cap and stick it in a pocket when you start to overheat between pools. It can be dangerous to sweat too much, and 80 percent of heat loss takes place through the head, making it the most efficient place to control buildup.

Then laugh at the horizontal snow and wait them out. Steelhead always seem ghostlike, but thrice so in winter. The colder the water, the more wraithlike they become. When you’re convinced the pool is barren from end to end and side to side, they appear, in solid form, muscling into your physical reality like rod-splitting dynamos.