Haha. Afterall, back in the old days they used to use red golf tees to catch steelhead. Why not a swimbait too, LOL. Actually, swimbaits are in the bag of tricks I really want to try.
Has anyone out there tried them for steelhead who is willing to talk about the outcome? My thoughts about it are below. I encourage challenging feedback and debate from you all. Poke holes in my ideas. It could help to come up with even better approaches.
Sooo....with a single hook coming up through the back of a swimbait I expect they would be friendlier and healthier when releasing steelhead than the hanging treble hooks on a plug. This alone is worth going in the that direction. I am expecting they would also get hung up less frequently as well with that hook configuration.
I fish for steelhead with a fly rod and streamer on occasion as well. Flyfishing purists might not like this story much, but in my brown trout fishing days on the Green River (Wyoming and Utah, not WA) I used to tie streamers on 1/16" and 1/8" jig heads and slay the browns on a light spinning rod loaded with 6 pound mono. This approach allowed both for swinging flies or bouncing them jig-like in deep current, but it was also super effective for letting jigs drop into deep holes on outside river bends and to swim them deeply through current transition behind boulders and trees. I used to cover 5X the water with my jig-streamers than I could with a fly rod. It also landed a lot more brown trout for me. Hypothetically, when one compares swinging flies to swinging swim baits, swim baits should have similar advantage.
Flies are a very visual target. With hair, and hackles and maribou, they can look totally alive when swinging in the current; which is uber-emphasized at the end of the swing. At the end of the swing the streamer changes speed and slows down, then drops deeper into the water column, then rises up through the water column again when the angler lifts the rod tip. All of this action flexes and pumps the fly in a way that makes it tantalizingly life like. End of the swing is frequently when a steelhead hammers that fly.
Comparing it to a swimbait, it is going to go through similar motions with its tail. It has the added benefit of creating more vibration in the water than a fly, especially with the club style tails. Streamers are primarily "sight oriented targets". A swimbait offers the 3 stimuli fish use for feeding and defending their space: sight, sound, and scent. Scent if legal in the water being fished of course. I suppose scent could be added to flies as well, but I have not heard of that being done very often.
I am very interested in input from steelhead anglers on these ideas. Stealhead caught my interest only in the past 4 years after moving to Oregon. Though I am having success with them more frequently, they are honestly still a riddle to me. And that is what is making it fun! Haha.
It could be even more interesting and quasi-scientific if some of you want to experiment with swimbaits too, and are willing to share feedback and trade on ideas.
