Sorry this took so long to post up, but I’ve been running pretty rich recently with the late-season cow tags I drew for December.

I went Steelhead fishing November 13th on the snake, thought I’d share…

We camped Friday night at Heller bar and put in there early Saturday morning. We decided to run upriver a ways, and ended up starting our fishing just above the imnaha, and began working our way upriver drifting the holes between rapids. We didn’t backtroll at all, because drifting (bottom bouncing) was doing pretty well. 10 steelhead on board, but only 4 were legal. We also caught a nice rainbow, and a bunch of pikeminnow and suckers. The pikeminnow were released according to standard practices. The suckers were just released.

About 2 o’clock we decided to cut the gills out of the trout we caught and see if we could use them to entice a sturgeon. Little bite, but nothing decent enough to set the hook, so no sturgeon, but all-in-all, a durn good day of fishing. I think next time I might keep a few pikeminnow to use as cut-bait, I’ve heard they work pretty good.

Setup for steelhead – light medium spinning rod, 18 pound test mainline, with a 3/8 ounce slinky weight on a 3-way swivel, about a 4 to 6 foot leader, double hook mooching setup with a small corky and a red prawn tail on the upper hook. Just cast out, let it hit the bottom, and drift downstream a little slower than the current to ensure your bait is drifting and not dragging. If it is dragging, use less weight. Any time the bait stops, set the hook. 5 out of ten times, it will be a bottom snag. The remaining 5 times, you’ve got a fish on. Be ready to lose gear, bring lots of extra setups.

Setup for sturgeon – heavy weight spinning rod (I can’t cast a level wind to save my life) with 95 pound test braided line, with a sliding swivel attached to 10 pound test attached to a 4-ounce cannon ball weight. Mainline swivel to a leader of high-test monofilament (about 4 feet) to a 5/0 circle hook with the bait on it. This rig allows for responsible bottom-fishing in a place where big sturgeon are threatened by derelict gear. The sliding swivel will slide off the mainline in the event of a break, so that there isn’t a baited hook weighed down on the bottom. The 10-pound test between the slider and the cannon ball allow you to break the cannonball off if you snag up – with 100 pound test line, a snag could mean cutting your mainline to get free, wasting a bunch of mainline and leaving it in the river for fish to get tangled up in.

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