Spin fishing for steelhead

[Jacks Tackle]

The NU fishes extremely well with spinners and spoons but differently! With all the ledges you have to focus more of your effort on boulder gardens and gravels flat riffles. In the summer the NU will run into the high 60's so small dull dark is the key! in winter, flashy and BIG!

The NU is my all time favorite river, there is no other river like it from hardware to skated dries it has angle for every one. My only regret is I live so far away! some day soon I will be there every day!

 

[Knot Chaos]

I prefer to change out the treble hook for a single side wash. Less likely to snag up when low and slow.

 

[RunWithSasquatch]

I prefer to change out the treble hook for a single side wash. Less likely to snag up when low and slow.

Welcome.

 

[plumb2fish]

A very good roseburg n. umpqua fisherman told me that the north fishes very poorly with spinners and spoons... it only took me about 30 hours to prove him right, switched to my flyrod the next time I went down and hooked up about 7 times... I think that river is a little cold for hardware, just an opinion though-

A good friend of mine told me that pink worms wouldn't work on the north...I had a couplw 15 fish days last March drift fishing with the 4" power worms near Glide....EPIC

 

[Thuggin4Life]

Not much to add here other than this kinda fishing sometimes gets expensive trust me. I'm gonna be doing a bit more of It.

 

[steelhead_stalkers]

A good friend of mine told me that pink worms wouldn't work on the north...I had a couplw 15 fish days last March drift fishing with the 4" power worms near Glide....EPIC

A guide we fish with on the North Umpqua says pink worms don't work very well. It only took me 30 feet and 20 seconds to show him they will bite pink! I would fish the Umpqua all winter with just pink worms and feel just fine. :lol:

 

[troutdude]

Not much to add here other than this kinda fishing sometimes gets expensive trust me. I'm gonna be doing a bit more of It.

That's correct Andy, unless you make your own. Then it's a little easier to handle losing a few here n' there.

 

[troutdude]

I prefer to change out the treble hook for a single side wash. Less likely to snag up when low and slow.

Welcome to OFF. Nice first post from two perspectives:

Fewer snags, as you suggested.

Easier / better for catch n' release.

 

[Team CF]

Pink worms seem really fun and something I really want to try, easy rigging and fairly cheap. I can still kinda feel like I am bass fishing. haha

 

[todd_brooks]

I'm surprised Rob didn't chime in with more on how to fish a spinner. The biggest ah ha moment for me was when I was shown how to fish a spinner by an expert. It's a little hard to describe and there are a lot of variables but if you work at getting your spinner up stream from you and get a loop of line in front of it, that pulls the spinner though the water. It's like magic, sometimes you don't have to do any more than that other than just holding on.. You then learn to adjust your rod tip and or adjust reel speed up or down based on what you feel your spinner doing. As in if its dragging bottom too much you lift your tip to get it up or crank faster. There's a reason there's books covering the subject. There's loads to know and learn and there's nothing quite like a steel slamming a spinner. Then there getting into making your own spinners which is a lot of fun to.

 

[Team CF]

I am pretty excited for it. I went out yesterday and loaded up on some essentials. Got some new floats and jigs as well as a litany of pink worming stuff, I really really think I can get that to work. I got some spinners as well I am actually getting pretty jacked up just typing this. Now if some fish would swim up I can start throwing. My tackleshop was all out of the SS yarn and that stuff is top awesome I think I will be making an order for some more soon.

 

[troutdude]

Hey CF, in case you can't find a copy of Jed Davis' book--with the color plates that I mentioned earlier--here ya go.

 

[Jacks Tackle]

TroutDude that is cool! I haven't seen that color plate in along time. Jed changed the color plates from each edition. I have the 3rd edition book. Excellent read!

 

[troutdude]

You're welcome. That plate if from Jed's 2nd Edition. I'd love to get a 1st Edition. Hmmm...maybe I'll start the hunt...

BTW, the first time I ever used Jed's design & methodology--I hooked into 4 monster nooks in one day! They were all over 30 pounds; and every one of them hit a size #3 ALL BLACK spinner!

 

[Jacks Tackle]

Sweet! Gotta love the results. If you find a 1st edition, please post the color plate! I love to see it again.

 

[Team CF]

Nice, I have not had a chance to go look yet for the book. I have however been tying jigs and making yarn balls like a mad man my room has pink all over it Heard that someone caught a nice chrome winter on the Main Umpqua today so I think Tuesday mid morning I am going to take a stab at it somewhere. River is super low but I need to fish!

 

[ZeeBorn]

Another tip I'd like to throw out there is, before you even start casting, hold the lure your about to fish with in the water and swing your rod until you see the lure just began to work, then look away from it or close your eyes as you continue to work the lure while maintaining the same action. Focus on how the vibrations of the lure feel as they are transmitted through the rod and into your hand. Remember that feeling. Now your ready to cast. This feeling will be dulled some depending on how much line you have out when you cast but you'll get a feel for that too. This will help you control the lure as you fish it buy allowing you to better sense how much action the lure is getting and also feel subtle bumps and ticks as the lure graze off the river bead.
Unless you can see the lure through the water as you fish, this will be the only way to know what it's doing. If you change to a different lure, do it again. Eventually you'll know how all your lures should feel and you can just get right to the fishing.

The first winter steelhead I ever caught was about a 12 lb native on the Sandy that I pulled out of a boulder garden with a #4 mat-silver plated spinner that I made after reading Jed Davis' book.
Good luck out there!