yesterday i was standing at one of my favorite holes drifting pink worms, i peer into the water to refresh my memory on the one large branch that has caught my presentation numerous times, i mark the snag and suddenly i see a mid-teen steel swim downriver nearly brushing that branch i was eyeballing..this hole must be at least fifteen feet deep and that fish was darn near fin out of water..i had hooked and missed one in this hole fifteen minutes prior to this, was this possibly the same fish?? can these upper water column steel be caught?? i tied on a spinner and kept it near the surface hoping to hook this fish but no takers..could someone please explain this behavior?

I've had a similar experience on the Snoqualmie. Was fishing one of my favorite holes with a buddy. We were casting floats and jigs out to this seam that was about 20 feet out. We're watching our floats when about a 15 pound steelie swims by within the length of our rods with its fins at or just below the surface. Both of us shorted our floats and made cast after cast upstream, but never got it to hit.

I'd guess that the fish's time spent near the surface like that was likely very temporary...unless I saw a fish actually holding up in the water column I wouldn't drastically change the depth I was fishing at.

Fish on...

Todd.

I agree with Todd. If you watch steelhead when they're moving or milling about, you'll occasionally see them roll on the surface, or sometimes swim along the surface for some strange reason. Sometimes around spawning time, they'll jump like crazy. These surface swimming and jumping fish are extremely unresponsive to lures in my experience, though the rollers can often be caught. Most aggressive fish hold near the bottom.

When I first started fishing with floats we had to make our own (1970s) and as a result they were fixed (peg thur a cork float). With our 8 1/2 foot rods could only fish to depths of 6 or 7 feet. Over several years caught a number of winter fish that were holding in 12 to 15 feet of water - clearly the bait was more than 5 feet off the bottom. Believe the fish were holding on the bottom but they moved that far to get the bait (low and clear water). Learned that I didn't have to be right on the bottom to catch winter fish.

As a side note several times had winter steelhead strike my red float on the surface (once in 12 feet of water).

Tight lines
Smalma

Todd and Wild Chrome have it right. One of the most unusual things I ever saw had to do with rolling steelhead. My friend and I were fishing a Vancouver Island River that had a lot of fish in it. One of the best runs had a guy fishing it . We stopped to talk to him and he told us he had never caught a steelhead. We assured him that he was in a great run and to keep at it. We talked to the guy every day for the next three days. he still had no fish and we always passed up "his" run. Finally, on our last day my friend asked the guy if he would mind if we made a few casts. The guy said to have at it. My friend hooked three steelhead on three casts.!

The guy's problem was he kept seeing rolling fish. Every time he saw a surface fish he would shorten the line between his float and his lure. Of course the biters were on the bottom where they usually are. My frined handed off the third fish, whicjh the guy propmptly lost. We showed him how deep to fish and left.

The next morning as we were leaving we stopped at the guy's run and he was as pumped as a kid at Christmas. He had hooked and landed his first steelhead.

Spent hens will feed at the surface. I was fishing with a freind who was a real cracker - never had caught many fish at all, much less a steelhead. I had caught 3 already fishing behind him as he just couldn't seem to get the hang of drift fishing and was either hanging up or fishing way over them (or casting in the trees ). Well, I came to this slow deep hole and while he was tying up again I pitched a rig in with a light lead. While I could still see my gear a fish came up and grabbed it. I slacklined her and let her spit my rig out, backed off from the hole, and directed my bud's next cast to that spot. The fish came up again and inhaled his rig when it was less than a foot from the surface, and he was so shook up that he automatically set the hook and wound up landing his first steelhead. Now this was in December, in a Oregon coast micro-stream, and though this hen was a chromer without a mark on her she looked strangely gaunt, and I feared she was one of those real early spawnouts we sometimes see down there, but I could hardly spoil his fun, and although that turned out to be the case upon cleaning it, it was still nice and red and pretty oily - she only had about a mile of river to spawn in after all and so couldn't get in too bad of shape.

Anyway, those surface cruisers may be spawners <img border="0" alt="[Goldfish]" title="" src="graemlins/goldfish.gif" />