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STEELHEAD NATION: The General makes the case for metal madness ...
POSTED Jan. 30, 2012 / 8:21 p.m.

Bill Herzog's NW Wild Country blog: 5 reason why you should be throwing spoons for steelhead

SEATTLE - For over 30 years, I've waved the flag for steelheading's oldest technique. Yet spoons are still the ultimate angling enigma.

It’s viewed in northern British Columbia (primarily in the Skeena region) as a technique so effective that locals and visitors to many waters consider it a real sin to use such a deadly weapon. Metal, as they will angrily explain, hooks every fish in the river and ruins opportunities for others, fly anglers being the protesting majority.

Yet here in the “deep south,” spoons are scoffed as an anomaly, something steelhead rarely strike, a lure used by those who haven’t yet figured out the simplicities and crushing carnage of side drifting.

Guess what, kids? Both parties are right. Winter steelheading features so many changes in water temperatures, height, clarity and even down to species of winter fish, our techniques must match these variables to achieve the ultimate goal: the magical connection between angler and fish.

Spoons can either make or break you. If there was ever a lure that is condition specific, it’s bent metal. Choose them at the right times and the tough becomes suddenly easy. On the flipside, you’ll often find that spoons on winter rivers are guaranteed skunkings.

Here are five good reasons why - and several why-nots - to bring a few spoons with you when the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest are dominated by wet, cold and grey.

Bill Herzog's 5 reasons for throwing spoons for winter steelhead
1. The Novel Alternative
We deal with this scenario each and every winter season: You show up barely post daylight after driving on treacherous black ice for seemingly ever, to find what? Every single angler, his brother, dog and therapist either lined up hole after hole or waiting at the rear of a half-mile-long launch line for the drift boat parade.

Instead of weaving the usual tapestry of expletives at your choice of river that particular day, hang back and observe which technique each angler has chosen. Matters little if on foot or afloat, just do some calculations. Are they all side drifting? More than likely in this day of Internet fueled minimally skilled minions of the more-fish-faster-now asylum of worship.

Are they casting jigs and bobbers? Perfectly pulling partially pink plugs, perhaps? After the morning’s assault, there will certainly be steelhead caught on the majorities’ technique.

However, in every single circumstance, regardless of the size of the river, degree of clarity, temperature or number of fish in a system, there will always be fish that fall into one of these categories: they may have been stuck lightly or shaken the hook; they may have had several of their brethren hooked close by and become wary to the repetitive offering or during periods of stagnant water conditions, that is no augmented flows bringing in fresh steelhead.

Often these stale steelhead begin behaving like those small birds next to the roadway that display nary a flinch when speeding autos blast by merely feet away. They recognize that, even though certain death is a hop to the left, these loud giants never vary from their path, thus are no threat. How do you suppose a fish, after being in the river for a week under heavy pressure, reacts to the same color and size Corkie or jig going by every minute?

Same gig. Now, something suddenly moves by imparting action and flash, completely different from anything previous. Bang.

When fishing heavily pressured rivers or stretches of water, be sure to use something that differs from the masses. Spoons fill that novel alternative.

Bill Herzog's 5 reasons to fish spoons for steelhead
2. Too Much Time On My Hands
How many of us out there have the ability to fish every single day of the year? If two of you raise a hand, it’s one more than I thought. More likely, we treasure every rare minute on the water away from cursed jobs and responsibilities. The latter, I’ll wager. Sometimes, it burns down to just having a few precious hours before time’s up. When minutes count, it’s paramount that you work as much water as possible to find the rare steelhead.

NOW is when flashing metal makes all the difference, as it brings to the table one feature other lures/baits lack, that being attraction radius.

Let’s set up a fictitious situation. You are standing at the top of a run at 7 a.m. with your levelwind and spoon. Your partner is using a spinning reel, bobber and jig - the typical “training wheels” setup. Jigs, as deadly as they may be, have an optimum attraction radius of perhaps 6 feet, that being 3 feet around the lure in clear water. It is merely presence and silhouette, lacking imparted action or flash.

It takes your buddy, lets say, 20 casts to properly work all the holding water in that particular run. Now you, the cagey veteran, start working the spoon. Here’s where you have the advantage.

A spoon’s flash and action ups the ante, as your attraction radius in clear water resonates out to 12 feet, double-plus that of any jig, drift bobber or bait. It takes you 10 casts to cover the water, now you reel up and drop down to the next pool while your partner is still waiting for his rig to dip in the first hole.

Run this math out a bit and by 8 o’clock the spoon has covered six different runs by the time the jig fisherman had covered three. Spoons give you the gift of time, as much more water can be covered in a short period. Even though both methods are effective for the condition, with the nod to jigs for far better effectiveness in clearer water, spoons give you the gift of more water worked for allotted time. Invaluable if you only have a couple hours of morning or evening to fish.

Bill Herzog's 5 reasons to throw spoons for steelehad

3. The teflon lure
When reading water and searching for steelhead, one constant applies year around, regardless of river size, temperature, etc.: Steelhead do not lay over sand, silt or pea gravel mixed with the former. Like anyone with a fine taste in music, they prefer rock and lots of it.

Larger rock in particular, that which breaks up current, provides hiding spots and prevents gills from sifting through coarse silt. Rock featuring diameters from softball to VW Beetle. Rock that eats even the fastest reflexes of the drift fisherman. Rock that varies in height which frustrates float anglers, as one set depth bangs rock a few feet then loses bottom for several feet the next. Sharp rock that surgically removes terminals, much to the delight of local tackle shops. Rock featuring ledges and configurations that fish love but defy any bottom bouncing technique.

Pair boulders with wayward submerged tree limbs and the side-drifting train halts abruptly at Snapsville Station, all aboard. What do we do when holding areas feature these unforgiving structures?

We need to employ techniques that play keep away, ones that never (or at best rarely) come in contact with the evil bottom. Plugs are good, but what if you cannot fish from a boat or the section of water is in a spot where boat positioning is impractical? The natural progression from rock is of course, heavy metal.

Spoons, when presented properly swing and wobble immediately above and follow contours of swiftly changing bottom structure. Tackle-eating bottom? Little concern to the spoon angler.

Steelhead, or any salmonid, cannot look down, just upward or straight out. When presenting lures a foot or more off rocky structure, not only can fish see them easily, the flash and animation of the lure will move the fish up off their lie to strike. So it matters not the makeup of structure - broken clay, large irregular boulders, trees or any combination of the former - swing some metal over and pick up fish others have left alone for fear of lost tackle.

Let’s take this one step further. All our favorite rivers feature sections that are not defined as “classic” holding water. Wide tailouts and spread-out runs that you may call “traveling” or “maybe” water, that is places that feature structure without any defined slots or buckets easily probed with drift gear. These wider, non-descript sections may hold fish, but to work them would require many drifts to properly cover. A spoon may be worked out, down and across these areas, sweeping the entire wide holding area effectively.

This is my favorite type of water when throwing bent metal. It is so difficult to work this style of holding water any other way except with spoon or fly that most, if not al,l anglers before you have ignored or made a few half-hearted casts and moved on. Take a long, hard look at these wide, vanilla tails and flats next time out and try not to laugh out loud when you begin to consistently take steelhead from these dismissed areas.

Bill Herzog's 5 reasons to throw a spoon for steelhead, only on NW Wild Country's Steelhead Nation

4). The Hostage Negotiator
Think of a big steelhead laying up underneath a maze of downed trees, branches and the like as a big dog in the yard, laying inside his doghouse. Comfortable and safe, he’s not moving for that succulent little doggy treat you threw 10 feet from him. Yeah, he’d eat it for sure if it was right close by, but not right now. That dog biscuit represents a small bait, jig or drift bobber.

Now throw a twirling, hissing cat into the yard, legs flailing rapidly. Fido blasts out of his lair in a nanosecond and grips the overly unwelcome Sylvester firmly in his jaws. Think of a spoon as that cat.

That extra imparted action, side-to-side wobble and most importantly flash brings them out of their hiding spot nine times out of ten. Also, one has to believe that a fish being tucked inside the trees away from the open water quite frankly was too far away to see a subtle presentation of drift bobber, jig, or everyone’s favorite now, the pink plastic nightcrawler. Great terminal offerings that would get the attention of any steelhead under identical conditions, but remember the spoon’s flash - that is what the fish sees up under his woody lair, and the flash is what brings it out to strike.

This also is my main theory behind why larger male steelhead strike spoons … but that’s coming up in Reason Five. Many times, hell, the majority of the time spoons are not the most effective lure for the conditions, but they are the most effective for that place and situation on the river. Heavily pressured fish, either from increased angler activity or boats will find downed trees for safety.

(Cue John William’s Superman Theme here, please, for this portion of the article)

If you have no other reason to carry a few spoons with you on the river, then for this one and only, please do. There are few lures on the planet that can actually separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.

Every single angler wants to greet the finest specimen of the sport, that is a trophy steelhead at or beyond the rare 20-pound mark. Your trophy choices are plugs, larger-profile drift bobbers like Spin-n-Glos, larger homemade high-floating rags, 6-inch plus plastic worms or spoons. If I had to choose two just tailor made for trophy steelhead, they would be the Tadpolly plug or oval style spoon.

Like the cat-in-the-dog-yard analogy, large steelhead are territorial, to the point rare is the instance where more than one fish is taking residence where “Ike” is laying. These kings of the pool will snap at and chase off most if not all other smaller fish.

In a canyon stretch of one West Coast trophy river, my partners and I have been privileged to observe some crazy steelhead behavior, at least we interpreted these actions as bizarre until they continued to repeat themselves over the years. Whenever a large buck was laying in the tail section, establishing territory, and a smaller male steelhead would move within a few feet of its lair, the larger male would, without exception, angrily charge and either aggressively bite the intruder or simply swiftly chase it off while popping its jaws.

Whenever we would back down a plug or spoon toward these large male fish, at the instant the lure became visible to the fish it would immediately begin a side-to-side sway while slowly backing down, each fin erect. Within a few seconds, the steelhead would swing out a few feet from the direct path of the lure then bolt upstream, violently attacking the intruder at a 45-degree angle, always biting the lure from the side. We watched this dozens of times with huge, male steelhead, and the results were always the same.

This behavior is what we don’t typically see when standing unseen from the bank or 60 feet upriver in a drift boat or sled. A spoon, as we can only assume, resembles a smaller fish invading the brute’s private space. Chomp, slam, irritant has been removed, except this one has a 2/0 siwash hook attached.

A non-animated lure like a small drift bobber, jig or even bait cannot evoke the same territorial response or false threat. For large fish, quite a bit of energy is required to move their bulks. Non-threatening terminals, unless presented in very close proximity to the fish, will not evoke responses in trophies to burn precious energy to move many feet to grab.

You want a monster? Toss metal. Spoons move giants and piss them off, bottom line. Bigger steelhead, male or female, will certainly bite jigs, small drift bobbers and their ilk, but unless you poke them in the snout with same, think large profile and be animated.

Every single veteran steelheader reading this can come up with at least one experience while on the water when jigs, plastic worms, baits and drift bobbers have been run through holding water many times without a response, then a spoon is sent down and the first cast is answered by a large male fish.

One more piece of incentive for metal: Aggressive fish are primarily fresh arrivals. Whereas normal techniques, such as drift gear or jigs may, get most if not all of the residents of the pool to take, a flashing animated lure often singles out the chrome from the dark. Most steelhead you will take during winter, especially during lower, clearer periods on larger rivers, will be brighter and for the most part bigger than others taken on alternative gear.