Medford Steelies

Steelhead fishing in South Western Oregon. I tell you, I think I had an epiphany on the phone with Jeff Gitzen who is a sales associate at Sportsman's Warehouse in Medford, Oregon. I am so used to talking with our fly fishing genius Josh Mills as a correspondent that I thought Josh might be the only omniscient one when it comes to steelhead. I got on the phone and asked Jeff about fishing for steelies down in his neck of the woods and I learned so much in five minutes that I feel like a Renaissance man. Listen up. "One of my favorite things about steelhead fishing is that there are 1 million ways to fish for them. Around here we fish the Rogue River, the Applegate River, the Umpqua River, that is the great thing about Southern Oregon. You can head in any direction and you have good steelhead fishing. The coastal rivers, gosh you can fish them in so many different ways. You can fly fish for steelhead which is a really effective way to go, if you are not into fly fishing, you can get into some more of the gear, spoons, spinners, and then one of the more popular ways around here is bait fishing, Whether it be night crawlers or roe or yarn or all three together at once, shrimp, there is a lot of ways to attack these fish and sometimes a little bead is more effective than a chunk of bait and sometimes the weirdest looking lure is more effective than anything else. There are so many ways to go at them and it is so tough to figure them out and that is what is fun is trying to figure them out.