A WAY THROUGH THE WOODS IN A STEELHEAD FOREST - Matt Straw

Trees provide food, shade, and shelter for young parr, which become smolts that leave for big water. They return to the trees in a few years as adults, bringing us to the forest, where we have to deal with all that wood. 

  

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.

—From Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Black Bird by Wallace Stevens

  

 

Winter grips the valley. Down a long, slippery path, we find the river banks buried in fluffy white blankets. No foot-prints but ours. We slowly wade out from the bank.

After several short casts, a simple rig runs through the tail of a riffle then slows as the leveling gradient of the land and the deepening pool combine to blunt the current. Sinkers find gravel, sending the message to fingers along a 9.5-foot blank. The feel deadens. Wrists and forearms respond, sweeping the blank up. 

She rises to within a foot of the surface and writhes like a snake on an electric wire, blurring crimson, white, and silver into a blush, like paint on an artist’s palette. Triceps engage as the realization hits: The fish is gone, the rod bending deep, the tip demanding “she went thataway.” The spool blurs as the rod drops parallel to the water to turn her head. It might not be necessary. Winter steelhead seldom leave the pool where they’re hooked. 

I don’t count on it.

Thirteen ways of looking at a winter steelhead: Floats; Spinners; Hair Jigs; Big streamers; Bottom rigs; Cranks; Corkies; Beads; Wigglers; Waxworms; Spoons; Stonefly nymphs; Other Plastics. Most of the time, when the water is truly cold (35°F or less), I opt for beads, spawn, or hair jigs under floats. But where fallen trees dominate cover options in the many sandy regions of the Great Lakes, I prefer the simplest rigging of all. 

 

STEEL IN THE WOOD

No footprints. No trucks or trailers at the landing several miles below, meaning no one spotted a truck there before setting out from the landing several miles above. A Cooper’s hawk circled overhead.

     

    

Snowfall settled on cedars and softened footfalls through the dark, silent wood. Majestic white pines surround us on a high bluff. As we reached the lip of the high bank, we could see the dark river below—a ribbon of black, wending its way through the kind of hardwoods that love a flood plain. A kingfisher skirted the glassy flow.

The water is stained the color of tea because the river rises in cedar bogs. From the shadow of red oaks hovering over the banks, we could see patches of white gravel in darker surroundings in a shallow run. Telltale signs of spawning activity, where browns or coho salmon deposited their future hopes a month or more past. For many fish that spawn here, in one of Michigan’s “most stable rivers on earth” (says fisheries scientist, Dr. Paul Seelbach) the forest will allow that hope to succeed. The forest literally bestows life on steelhead trout. In winter, bright rainbows return the favor, filtering back into the woods like aquatic ghosts. We crossed, being careful to avoid crushing hopes with our boots on patches of white gravel. 

“A riparian area is the transition between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in which the terrestrial system influences the aquatic system and vice-versa,” reads the Michigan Department of Natural Resources website in an article on riparian zone management. “Mature trees along our rivers and streams are critical to stream health because they introduce large woody debris, which controls how our streams look and how they work.” Not to mention the protection and food fallen wood provides for hatchling trout.

  

  

  

  

Trees aren’t important just because they alter flow, provide cover, and create pools. Studies indicate that young steelhead parr obtain 40% or more of their food supply from trees, spring through fall, in some rivers. That food arrives in the form of fallen ants, spiders, inch worms, and other terrestrial invertebrates. Another study revealed that an old hardwood with branches extending over the water can produce as much as 500 pounds of food for fish in a single year. 

Without the shade provided by trees, most trout streams in the Midwest would become too warm to support rainbows and browns, let alone brookies—which require colder water than other trout. Without the firm grip tree roots have on the soil, holes would fill up due to bank failure. The increased sediment captures and holds heat from the sun. Leaves from trees settle on bottom. Bacteria feed on the leaves, followed by the larvae and nymphs of stoneflies, caddisflies, and mayflies. Leaves become trout. The quickest way to ruin a trout stream is clear cutting right to the banks. 

  

  

The river is low, clear, and cold—which means steelhead will be both sparse and wary. Spooking a few isn’t so bad when the river is up and each good wintering pool holds several giant rainbows. Spook one in low-clear conditions and the next chance to hook up might be a mile or more away. So I work slowly into position, careful not to throw a heavy wake. I bait up after settling into a strategic spot, allowing fish to become accustomed to a human in their midst. 

Oh, they know you’re there. In low-clear streams, steelhead know. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they don’t. You might get away with bright clothes, brash motions, and clumsy footwork, but don’t count on it. When ready, make a short cast, to the edge of the shallow sand or gravel, where the bottom first becomes barely indistinguishable to polarized vision. The next cast should be just a few inches longer, and so on, allowing the fish in the pool to grow accustomed to the rhythm of sinkers and bait cutting into the flow with as little disturbance as possible, accomplished by stopping the rig just above the surface on the cast.

After several short casts, sinkers begin finding more gravel and rock. The familiar and gratifying “tap-tap-tap” hums up the 6-pound Maxima Ultragreen and through my old G. Loomis STR1141. Like a major-league pitcher evoking the “mechanism” that filters out the crowd—kingfishers, hawks, and minks fade into the winter postcard background. The world becomes this river and my connection to it. The rod extends downstream, following, stretching the natural drift of the bait as it tics along near bottom.

In all of fishing, few things are harder to describe than the typical “strike” of a steelhead on a bottom rig. Little trout feel like little perch, bap-bap-bapping away at the bait. A big trout just closes its mouth on it. The tapping of sinker on gravel is barely interrupted. The sensation is dull, yet causes time to hover in the space between heartbeats. The rod tip bends down a quarter inch. As if triggering an ancient trap resting between synapses in a mind immersed in this activity for decades, the rod snaps back like fingers from a hot skillet. The tip jolts down, the blank begins to thrash, and the drag begins to sing.

As it finally tired, the steelhead was drawn up onto a snow-covered ice shelf. The rainbow lives up to its name, providing a bright exclamation point of crimson in a gray and white world. She had obvious scars from a commercial net crosshatching her sides. 

  

  

Undaunted, she persevered and obviously thrived. Had it not been able to find enough food early in life, it couldn’t maintain such a healthy profile—couldn’t escape the net. Many fortuitous turns, over the previous four years, allowed this steelhead to escape the fates suffered by 95% of its brothers and sisters born in the same riffle at the same time. The birds, the bears, the humans in boats. And, from the very first moments in the life of this fish, it thrived because of trees. 

 

THE SHELTERING WOOD

In the softer substrates of the Great Lakes region, deadfalls are common. Wood is everywhere in the flow. It becomes both yin and yang—the best of times and the worst of times. It provides cover. It steals your time. It giveth and it taketh away. Steelhead are found, but 60 hooks are left lodged in the wood. 

I love floats, but anglers who try to tackle wood-infested rivers with floats surrender 20 to 40 percent of the flow to good bottom riggers, who can angle drifts over and under snags that vertically hanging rigs can’t avoid. Fly fishing gives way to “chuck-and-duck” perversions that fish more horizontally than vertically.

   

   

   

   

My “rigging” consists of two to six size #3 split shot crimped onto the main line (6-pound Ultragreen) 18 inches to 3 feet above a size #6 Mustad 9260D, depending on how fast the flow is and how dense the wood is. Where wood cover is thick, a short leader finds less of it. But the longer the leader, the less affected a bait will be by the jolts, starts, and stops of sinkers banging on bottom. Everything is a compromise in wood. A swivel is just conceit unless the flow is fast enough to twist line, in which case I use a barrel swivel leaving a six-inch tag end off the knot on the main-line side for attaching those split shot. Leaders range from 2- to 5-feet long, depending on water clarity. 

The bait is a spawn bag. In winter, the eggs might be from a female coho salmon, brown trout, or steelhead, always taken from “put-and-take” streams with no natural reproduction. Eggs from kings and lakers often work, but rank fourth and fifth on my list in winter. In low, clear water, the bag is small, with the diameter of a dime or nickel. In high water, the bag is large, with the diameter of a quarter. But the essential ingredient is 3 to 6 Redwing Tackle Float Beads. 

  

  

Float beads are just little spheres of Styrofoam that keep the bait six inches to a foot or so off bottom. Worden’s Lil’ Corky and the Beau Mac Cheater—leader floats that slide on the line ahead of your bait—work, too. But, in wood, it’s one more thing to dig out of the vest and slide onto a leader when you break off. And you will break off. A lot. Fishing dawn to dark will produce 40 to 80 hangups per day in wood-infested streams. That number can be reduced, but snags can’t be avoided entirely. A simple system gets you back in the water quick. 

When breaking off, I make every effort to ensure the line breaks at the hook knot. Split shot are pinched on gingerly, with just enough pressure to keep current from making them slide when placed on the main line, but not enough pressure to damage line. If the line isn’t damaged, the weakest point (on good line) has to be the knot on the hook. And the Mustad 9260D is not a premium hook. The metal bends rather than snaps. With 8-pound Ultragreen, the 9260D can be straightened most of the time. With 6-pound Ultragreen, it straightens some of the time—more often with good knots (I use the Trilene Knot).

The 9260D is the right hook in wood because it has a beak and a down eye. Up eyes (i.e octopus and salmon-egg hooks) are all but worthless in wood. A down eye, especially when accompanied by a beaked point, narrows the gap, leaving wood less room to invade. Straight points hit wood in current like darts. Beaked points deflect. Not being a premium hook, the 9260D is less than extremely sharp out of the box, so I touch up 100 hooks with a hook hone every night before striking off into a steelhead forest. 

On a steady, direct pull, with gradually increasing pressure, a simple rig breaks at the hook or straighten it. Add a swivel and you often lose it, meaning three more knots. Multiply your down time by three. Bend the 9260D back into shape and it can land a dozen steelhead without straightening. At the most, one knot will be required after a snag and you’re back in business with a main-line rig. For years I fished with a swivel in wood, attaching split shot to the dropper off the main-line knot, digging a spool out of my vest to tie on another leader after each break off. I still fish that way in quicker streams, or flows with more rock than wood. But when the entire rig is lost, a swivel container, leader spool, hook box, and split-shot carousel all come out of the vest, followed by three knots and more crimping to get back in business. With a well-fashioned main-line rig, sinkers are rarely lost, leaving far less lead in the river. Slide the shot up the line a little farther and tie one knot. The time saved can put several dozen “extra” steelhead on the bank over the course of a single winter.

By making short casts first and increasing the distance of each successive cast by 6 inches or less, A) Fewer steelhead get “lined,” and B) More casts are made to each pool before snagging up. Wade slowly downstream a step or two while pulling out a hook and tying it on. Don’t leave. Embrace the snags. Keep trying the spot from different angles. Try it with the rod held high, low, and in-between. Sacrifice a few hooks to eventually find a spot where the entire pool can be accessed, even where one step in either direction results in a snag on every drift. Next time around, you walk right to that spot. Before long, you’re down to 10 lost hooks a day instead of 60. 

  

   

Bottom rigs slow the presentation down. In water under 36°F, I sometimes overweight the rig slightly, slowing it even more, giving steelhead time to find it and vice-versa. Steelhead use slow water in these conditions and seldom chase—one reason to slow the rig down, but also to make incremental casts. They may not move 6 inches to take it.

Steelhead averaging 8 pounds arrive from vast, open spaces to invade forests via thin water, then spend the winter—a fascinating phenomenon. Walking along so many forested rivers, I sometimes wonder how many anglers are aware of the direct relationship between trees and fish. 

In many cases, riparian habitat is the difference between a thriving fishery and no fishery at all. With no trees on the bank, gripping the soil with roots, the spawning sites where steelhead are born would have silted in long ago. The river would widen and grow shallow, the sheltering pools would fill in with sediment, and sand would bury the spawning gravel. With no trees on the bank to shade the water, the river would get warmer. Many degrees warmer. Too warm for coldwater fish like steelhead. Natural reproduction would become a thing of the past. 

Irish coffee warmed over a tiny fire under dense cedars in a silent snowfall completes one part of three interlocking circles. Trees provide food, shade, and shelter for young parr, which become smolts that leave for big water. They return to the trees in a few years as adults, bringing us to the forest, where we have to deal with all that wood. Embrace the snags, keep it simple, enjoy the sheltering cedars, and watch your step. 

 

 

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