Spring run has peaked!

[sagefisher]

Yea, out here they call steelies a fish of a thousand casts but I think it is actually two thousand casts.



Larry ---sagefisher---

[hap]

I almost feel dirty looking back at some of the days I have had fishing for them... Remote rivers with difficult access, lots of fish, and little hesitation to strike.

[wizard]

Tigfly, they are all lake run rainbows. Whether they run upstream from the Finger Lakes, or the Great Lakes, they are still lake run. There are no true Steelhead in NY as in ocean living fish. The stock for the Great lakes fish were from western steelhead, while the Finger Lake strain are domestic rainbow. Both are technically Lake runs. As for color, that comes from time spent in the stream and closeness to the actual spawn. Here are two more colorful fish from same stream much earlier in winter Dec/Jan. Bright silvery fish are usually fresh as in just having come into the stream within a matter of days.

[Preston Singletary]

Since it seems to create a degree of controversy, perhaps it's unfortunate that the term steelhead was ever coined. In fact, the term's etymology is uncertain, it probably originated with commercial fishermen back in the day when the steelhead was still a commercial target. The steelhead has stronger, heavier bones, including its skull, than any of the other Pacific salmons and it was necessary to give it two or three whacks with the club as opposed to the one blow necessary to subdue other salmons.

As someone pointed out above, rainbow trout and steelhead are indistinguishable, even to the genetic level; resident rainbow trout can, and do, produce migratory offspring and migratory rainbows (steelhead) can, and do, produce resident offspring. Most rainbows exhibit some form of migratory behavior where it is possible; be it moving from a small stream down to a larger one, from a stream to a lake or, where accessible, to the ocean in order to feed and grow before returning to their natal streams to spawn.

As Roderick L. Haig-Brown wrote: "The rainbow is an individualist, a pioneer searching always wider scope; mere rivers confine him and he goes with the salmon into the breadth of the sea, to grow himself to the silvered nobility of the steelhead".

[vicrider]

And just to throw a little more confusion to the game, in MN they introduced the Kamloops strain of rainbow. They took off and grew fast and did well in the lake but boy could you tell the difference between a looper and what we and most call the lake run rainbow STEELHEAD. It was a joke since I smoked a lot of fish years ago (yes, steelhead, lake trout, and salmon) that the loopers were already smoked when you caught them. They were the darkest rainbows I've ever seen, even being fresh from Lake Superior. All I know is back 30 years ago my friends and I haunted the Lake Superior North Shore streams and kept track of fish. Counts over a hundred in a good year's run were not unusual amongst us, and it was a really bad year if you didn't catch at least 50 fish over 3#s. Then, we'd make a trip to MI in the fall many years and tangle with 10-15# steelhead and coho salmon and 10-30# Chinook salmon. Yep, those were some great years but I'll not see them again because many of the best spots we fished are not privately controlled or accessed only by using ropes and being part billy goat.