Happyshort

In the State of Washington rivers run big. I guess with all that rain the water has to go somewhere. The Cowlitz River is no exception. At places in the river the Cowlitz is a 100 yards wide. It can be waded in places but a boat is needed to get to the prime gravel bars. Steelhead school up behind these gravel bars waiting for the random salmon roe that float off the redds. Cowlitz River steelhead fishing can be successful with a variety of techniques. With a spinning reel and rod, you can bounce roe or use a lure like a Jackall Aragon in green or red. The Sunfish green is my favorite because it most closely represents the salmon parr. Holding the lure in the feeding area while giving it some back and forth action is the most successful. When fishing from gravel bars be careful not to disturb any redds. If you don’t know what a redd looks like have someone point one out to you. After that they become quite easy to recognize.

For fly fisherman there are many techniques that can be employed. Swinging streamers through the feeding area is both effective and you get the hardest strikes. Let the streamer dangle a while at the end of the swing. Casting from a boat with a weighed line through the gravel bar and into the pool at the tail with a nymph or Glo bug will give you subtle strikes but big steelhead. Nymphs I would recommend are the Polar Shrimp, the Hare’s Ear and the Golden PT. There is a third method that I would like to tell you about taught to me by the best nymph fisherman I have ever seen.

He called it the ‘modified greased line’ method. His name was Dwight Anderson and he wrote an article about his method in Fly Fisherman’s magazine about 16 years ago. His set up was a long leader attached to a floating running line. On the leader he put an incredibility sensitive strike indicator to what he guess was about a foot from the bottom of a long run. The indicator was bright wool yarn teased out like Don King’s hair then dipped in liquid silicon. Next he would cast the nymph upstream and has it float by he would be continually casting out more and more line until forty yards of running line lay in loops on the water. Watching for the first time, I wondered how he would ever set the hook if he had a strike. As the pile of line slowly unfurled, the indicator tilted slightly and instead of lifting his rod tip for the strike, He quickly stripped a foot or so of line through his rod’s guides. The line that lay in hoops on the water glided on the surface a foot through its entire length until it reach the nymph which move a foot and hooked the steelhead. I only fished with him one day and he caught and released steelhead after steelhead. He landed more steelhead in one day than most fisherman landed in a year, no exaggeration. You might try this technique the next time you on the Cowlitz River steelhead fishing.

You can find more information about Cowlitz River steelhead fishing at our site. While you’re there grab your copy of a free report to help you plan your next trip and then read the secret to finding free fishing games online.

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