3-14 SS Steelie Response

 Do steelhead eat because they need to or is it just something known as predatory response? That’s a really big question that only Josh Mills can answer.

 Josh Mills and I were talking the other day and he absolutely stupefied me with some theoretical material regarding how to work a fly, water and fish. Leads me to believe steelhead fishing is not a hobby, but instead a hard science. “You cast out perpendicular. You kind of put a belly and it skitters across the water and this particular fly is called a Scopper was developed by Scotty Howell. It has a foam lip on this deer hair and when you pop it in the water it creates a real big surface disturbance. It is almost like an aggressive predatory response that these fish come up and smack the crap out of it. There has to be enough fish in the water, there has to be one crazy enough to hit it, there has to be an angler who’s crazy enough to be there, and also you have to have good water conditions meaning ample water in the pools that you are fishing, temperature in the mid 50s or mid 40s that will predicate that steelhead will come and chase as opposed to just let stuff come to them because truthfully, they do not need to eat once they hit fresh water. It is all latent predatory response. It is a big gigantic point of controversy with steelhead, whether they need to eat or not. Genetically they do not need to eat. So when you get  a fish to come up and do everything it is  supposed to not do, and consistently, it’s amazing. Like raising children. ( Laughter)