What's your steelhead spread consist of?

[slickwater]

Fished one 3 color and a full core 2 mono dipsys one with a spoon one with flasher and fly. Full core never git bit,3 color twice and 2 riggers at 39 and 50' got hits. 2 riggers down deep for kings no hits. Lost 4 2 were steelhead or Atlantic Salmon (shook the hook) not sure why we kept losing fish.

Would like to try for the steelhead again but would like to catch more crome so,what would your best setup consist of? Steelhead were from surface down to 50'.

[jerryriggin]

1,2,3,5,7 and 10 color lead on boards. Mono slide divers and 2 riggers with free sliders. Cover as much water as u can. Spoons on everything. I like pro kings Flintstones dw SS and silver streak regular and mini for the steelhead

[Gnarf]

If you land 50% of the steelhead that hit you're doing pretty good.

Short cores with orange pink or green does well. I like stingers and superslims. Faster speed is good too. 3.0 or faster at the ball.

[mincmi]

Are you targeting steel or just putting out a spread that is covering various levels of the water column?

When we are specifically targeting steel, we look for good water and then will work the top 25-30 feet of the water column with six boards and short cores and coppers, plus two braid divers. We will usually run the down riggers deeper but then they will have free sliders in the target zone. Majority of the hits are off the boards.

All spoons usually for us, and 3.4 SOG is on the slow end. Usually closer to 4+. Like others have said, small spoons, mini steaks, super slims in orange but like to keep them honest with a green – usually a SS modified NBK in the spread. Halloween is one of our favorites. We have a standard size Halloween that is approaching triple digit fish if not already past the 100 mark. Sometimes they seem to prefer copper plated spoons, especially on darker days.

Make sure your hooks are very sharp, and expect some violent hits.

[slickwater]

We were targeting everything. But if we knew there were no kings around we would have targeted just steelhead. What length of leaders and pound test on the dipsys with spoons? We were going 2.2-2.4 at ball and over 3 gps speed ball was 60' down. The one steelhead we got was 39 down on rigger 100' back.

[mincmi]

We were targeting everything. But if we knew there were no kings around we would have targeted just steelhead. What length of leaders and pound test on the dipsys with spoons? We were going 2.2-2.4 at ball and over 3 gps speed ball was 60' down. The one steelhead we got was 39 down on rigger 100' back.

When we are targeting steelhead, we are not run flashers, meat, etc. and yet you still take an occasional lake trout or king - just like you take an occasional steelhead on something when targeting kings, or browns. If you just start just start throwing everything out there from a 3 color with a mini streak to a 11" paddle in front of a meat rig you are actually decreasing your opportunities as not everything plays well together. Sure you may run into a fish or two but the chances of having a big catch will be reduced as many of your lines will not be operating at their optimum.

We use 30-35' 20# fluorocarbon leaders on the cores and Cu. That might be a little light, but the I like the action of the 20# over the heavier products with the long leaders. The divers only have about a 6-8' 40# fluoro leader, but they are slide divers that are set back 100' before going down if they are running in the top 30.

[slickwater]

Ok so I don't really need to downsize my leaders that I use for kings to catch steelhead.

[Bad Dog]

First thing I'd do is sharpen your hooks.