The bite not only picked up, but the fish apparently took it better, too. We went eight for 10 over the course of the afternoon, finishing nine for 13, well better than I’d have guessed we’d do considering the conditions.
Jon Kolehouse steers a winter steelhead into the net.
The best day to go steelhead fishing in the winter is:
A. When the sun’s out so it’ll warm the water and get the fish biting,
B. When it’s overcast so the fish are less spooky, or
C. Whenever you can.
Count me firmly in the “C” camp. If you wait until the conditions are most favorable, you’ll never get around to fishing.
This became abundantly clear to me a couple of years back when I’d set a date, just before Christmas, to fish with Denny Bouwens on the Muskegon River. When the day arrived, it was during a brutal cold front and there was big wind to boot. Bouwens called me the night before to suggest we wait for a warming trend or, at the very least, a calm day. But I was not to be deterred; I had the time, the inclination, and, just as importantly, the clothing to go. Weather be damned. Bouwens, somewhat reluctantly, acquiesced.
So I don’t suppose I need to tell you what happened, do I? Well, I will anyway: They were biting. Over the nearly seven hours Bouwens, his buddy George Riegel, and I spent on the Muskegon River on a bitterly cold, overly windy, mostly overcast day, we went 10 for 19 on steelhead and caught at least a dozen resident trout, too, including three browns, two of which would have measured in the high teens. And there’s no telling how many bites we had when we failed to connect.
It was the usual cold-water drill; Bouwens would anchor the boat a good cast away from a deep hole or a slow run and we’d drift our baits through it under a bobber. Bobber goes down, rod goes whoosh. Over the course of the day we got bit on everything we threw—salmon, brown trout or steelhead spawn, tied in small bags or large bags, or even single beads. Nothing seems better than anything else. We had some slower periods and some bang-bang stretches, as you always do, but how slow is it really when you boat more than 20 fish? They were willing to play and we clobbered ‘em.
What was especially interesting is that the fish were acting like the water temperature was still in the 50s instead of just on the plus side of freezing. They were fighting like crazy, zig-zagging across the river, taking drag like kings, and coming out of the water like mini killer whales. And they were big, too—we had three that would go better than 10 pounds (the biggest weighed 11 ½ pounds on a hand-held scale) and though there were a couple of smaller skippers in the mix, the bulk of the steelies were in that seven- to eight-pound range.
None of us would have expected it. Bouwens acknowledged that he was glad I’d halfway shamed him into going.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve caught fish on days that we didn’t think we had environmental factors in our favor. It happens a lot.
I remember a January day several years back when I joined up with Mark Chmura for a trip on the Manistee River. It was way cold, the kind of day when you keep the propane heater going non-stop. And to make matters worse the water was rising, which must have had something to do with what they were doing at Tippy Dam miles upstream—we put in just above the lake, ran upstream, and fished our way back down—because it certainly wasn’t caused by melting snow.
Denny Bouwens with a Muskegon River steelhead.
We were drifting spawn bags below bobbers and it was one of those days when if you didn’t bust the ice out of the rod eyes after every cast you’d backlash the reel, which, of course, I did on my fourth cast of the morning.
It took me a fair bit of time to pick out the bird’s nest. The water from the line had frozen on the spool, complicating matters, and though I have a fair bit of experience picking out backlashes (trust me on this), it was a struggle to get back in gear. Chmura kept after me to let him fix it, but heck, I’d done it to myself. No reason he shouldn’t keep fishing.
After I cleared the snarl, I let the bobber drift downstream and within seconds, it disappeared. I shot the rod tip skyward and bingo.
Chmura just started laughing.
“That fish was sitting there looking at that spawn bag dangling there for five minutes and when it came down to him, wham.” Indeed, it seemed that way. It turned out it was a gorgeous bull steelhead, about nine pounds according to Chmura’s calibrated eyeballs, bright silvery with that faint red stripe along the lateral line that gives rainbow trout their name. I brought it to the boat. Chmura netted it, hoisted it for a quick photo and released it back into the river.
It was a fine start to what would turn out to be memorable day. We picked away at them, catching one here, one there, but never more than one from any given run. By early afternoon, we’d gone five for six, when I noticed the water had stopped rising and, in fact, was beginning to subside. And that’s when everything changed.
Chmura caught a fish. And then another. Then I caught one. Then Chmura caught another. And another. Then I stuck a big mama—easily the best of the day—that I fought well up to the boat until it popped the eight-pound leader. (This was my own fault; I was pressuring the fish too much.)
We called it a day having boated 10 ‘heads on a day when we never saw another boat—that’s how cold it was—on one of the best steelhead streams in the state (and therefore, anywhere).
If I were to pick a day to go steelhead fishing in the winter, I’d chose, ideally, the third for fourth day of a warming trend where the temperatures had returned to below freezing overnight so there had been some snow melt—enough to put a little color in the water—but not so much that the river was still on the rise. In my mind it would be overcast and cold when we started in the morning, so the water would be falling, but warming over the course of the day. I’d probably fish spawn bags, unless the water was quite clear, in which case I might opt for a bead (or maybe yarn). But some of my steelhead fishing brethren would disagree with me on virtually every one of these factors.
For instance, I had a conversation on this topic with John Hojnacki, a veteran Michigan steelheader with whom I’ve fished a bunch of times, a couple of years back. Hojnacki says the temperature doesn’t have to climb over the course of the day. And it doesn’t have to climb much, period. Hojo was crowing about how he and Jon Kolehouse, an excellent steelhead guide on the Muskegon River, “smoked ‘em up,” a day earlier, catching a boatload of “silver bullets” on a day that barely broke 20 degrees.
“The water temperature was 31 and a half degrees, dude, and they were out of the water right now,” he said. “Nobody else was out there. We either had a fresh run of fish or the fish have been there and been left alone.”
Hojo, who has spent a goodly portion of his adult life in pursuit of steelhead, says those guys who talk about 37-degree water being some sort of magical light switch that turns the steelies into non-stop biting machines are just kidding themselves. “Thirty-one and half,” he repeated. Several times.
Mark Chmura shows off a Manistee River steelhead.
Hojo has more stories than Michael Jackson ever sold records about fishing in the
dead of winter, sliding drift boats down impossibly snowed-in launch ramp, breaking ice to get at patches of open water downstream, then “smoking them up,” as he says, doing high double-digits by running plugs on days when sane men would rather talk about fishing than actually go. And unlike many others, Hojo doesn’t believe the bite’s best in the late afternoon after the sun has been shining on the river all day and it has hit its high temperature mark.
dead of winter, sliding drift boats down impossibly snowed-in launch ramp, breaking ice to get at patches of open water downstream, then “smoking them up,” as he says, doing high double-digits by running plugs on days when sane men would rather talk about fishing than actually go. And unlike many others, Hojo doesn’t believe the bite’s best in the late afternoon after the sun has been shining on the river all day and it has hit its high temperature mark.
“I still think the best bite is first thing in the morning,” he said.
For his part, Kolehouse prefers overcast skies to sunny ones, regardless of what it does to the water temperature.
“I hear people talk about how the sun warms the water up and all that, but regardless of the water temperature, I’d rather have an overcast day,” he said. “Our water is pretty clear and the fish seem more active on overcast days. And even if it does warm the water, that doesn’t happen until late in the day.
“Trout are the same way. You can catch a few fish on sunny days, but we do better when it’s overcast.”
My experiences with Kolehouse, with whom I’ve fished a large handful of times over the years, have been that we catch them better on darker days, regardless of the temperature. I remember a few years back when a buddy and I, fishing with Kolehouse, caught five ‘heads and a nice brown trout on bags and beads on a sunless day in 32.4-degree water. The cold water didn’t matter.
Au contraire, says my buddy Jim Romine, who is an all-around good angler but as accomplished a plug-runner as any I’ve fished with. Romine says sunny weather is your friend, especially if it’s good and cold.
“When you have really cold temperatures, those fish sun themselves,” said Romine, with whom I fish a day or two every year in either the St. Joseph River or the Manistee River. “That sunshine is good for them, especially in murky water that warms up throughout the day. When steelhead are in the river they spend 99 percent of their time in less than eight feet of water. Even out in the lake, you catch them less than 35 feet deep. They’re not afraid of the sun.”
Well, the guy has a point. Go out to a thermal break in 300 feet of water and you generally catch steelhead on body baits that are running barely subsurface.
I remember a trip with Romine on the Joe several years back when it was cold enough that he didn’t want to get started until well up in the morning (which is unusual for Romine, who is ready to go all the time). We had our first fish in the boat shortly after we started, but missed the next two. Romine’s explanation?
“It’s still cold,” he said. “They’re not taking it good yet.”
It was a blue-sky day that did, indeed, warm up as it progressed. The bite not only picked up, but the fish apparently took it better, too. We went eight for 10 over the course of the afternoon, finishing nine for 13, well better than I’d have guessed we’d do considering the conditions.
Certainly for most of us, our fishing time is limited. And if your schedule is flexible enough, you can possibly wait for optimal environmental conditions before heading down to the river. But I’ve had enough memorable experiences on days when the weather was anything but textbook to not rule any day out. The best time to fish for winter steelhead is, simply enough, whenever you can.
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