Doug and Jeremy from In-Fisherman headed over to catch steelhead on some of my big flashy jigs. A high pressure system had us locked into blue skies with not even a hint of clouds, great weather for fisherman but not the recipe for hot steelheading.
We pounded the water for the first day and a half with a couple nice steelhead in the net. Then for no explainable reason, in the middle of the afternoon, a group of eager fresh fish moved into our area and we put several more in the net. The last one of the day being a great fighter, actually making us give chase downstream.
Credit should be given to Gabe Hillebrand and our very own Steve Martinez who put me onto this techniques several years ago. If you haven’t fished big streamers for steelhead, it’s a lot of fun. Unlike drifting flies or fishing a crank bait or spinner, you have complete control over the depth and action of your jig. Swimming jigs is probably most like swinging streamers. There is so much feel with the braided line that we could often feel the difference between a pike or steelhead hit, sometimes not setting the hook if we were sure it was a pike.
