I understand the sink tips are the way to go unless one is skating dries. It seems that sink tips as long as twenty feet are being used to get the flies down deep and using three feet of tippet. How does one cast such a long heavy leader? It does not sound pretty to me 
. Of what use is a shorter sink tip such as six feet or even four feet or is longer necessary? I have a WF9S number six rate sinking line, but mending that thing would be something else.
Have I been wasting my time just using a weighted fly with my WFF line?
Thank you.
Hey Gardenfish,
I may be a bit confused, but the leaders arenāt 20 feet long. The lines are standard sink tip lines. They usually have 15 to 20 feet of sink tip at the end, the rest of the line floats (easier mending). In off color water my leader may only be three to four feet long.
If you get a chance, read through Dec Hoganās new book, A Passiion for Steelhead. Great info on steelheading on the fly.
REE
ah, so we are talking about a line with the sink tip built in, not a line to which a separate sink tip is looped and then with the tippet added. Okay, that makes for sense. Somehow I have been missing that. REE, thanks a bunch. Now I have to buy a new line.
I dunno, Garden, Iāve landed a thousand or so in my years, and I have never used other than a floating line, and have never thought I was missing out where I fished. But to each his own. Thereās no actual RULES, you know.
Dennis
PS you can buy sink tip kits with loop connectors, so you do not HAVE to buy a new sinktip line. But go ahead if you want to, never hurts to have more gear for more opportunities.
Gotta agree with DG. I havenāt landed as many steelhead as him, but, I have landed a few. I have a couple of multi-tip lines for my two handed rods and the sinking tips have never been wet. I find that I can get a fly down with good mending, or just luck.
REE
IMO the color of the water, the current speed and the depth of the fish have more to do with line and tippet selction than anything else. When fishing a tail out, I like a 9-10 foot leader and a floating line. When the water if off color, I use a shorter leader and a sink tip. Remember, big flies catch big fish, at least this works for me with steelhead and salmon in off color water. One time on the Nehalam,in Oregon, during the winter, the water was so high and churned up you could plant corn in it. The steelhead were hugging the shorline, maybe 2 to 4 feet from the bank. This called for some unconventional tactics.
I use floating lines for almost all of my steelheading. If iām swinging flies, I use sinking poly leaders with the floating line and it works great. It gives you greater versatility than the sink tip lines do.
Hello Gardenfish, Iāve been playing with my first two sink tip lines for about 8 months now and I had a feeling that when swinging flies for steel it wouldnāt make a whole lot of difference in fly depth attained. Iād used a floating line for years up till last spring and got the depth I wanted, not a whol lot different than with my new sink tip flylinesā¦like everyone is saying, leader length, material and mending can do the same job. Overly fast water equalizes floating or sink tip depth I might add. I really have to mend furiously to get my fly under in fast whitewater and I donāt want to work that hard.
Now if only I could say Iāve landed a thousand ! Iām working on it thoughā¦three trips this past week.
Drive south and Iāll show you on the North Umpqua sometime !
Cheers,
MontanaMoose
MontanaMoose, wow the North Umpqua. what a lovely stream.Thanks for your offer. 
Thanks to all of you. I have some clarity now.
A techinique that I use in fast/pocket water, is to simply use a straight fluro leader. Due to itās narrow diameter, it cuts through the water faster and is less subject to current as tapered leaders or sink tips are.
OKā¦ my two cents. I think that the depth of presentation is the most important factor determining whether or not a Steelhead will react to a fly [I am referring specifically to Western SHā¦I have no experience with the East]. More important than pattern [within limits]. That being said, the rate of sink will matter. I certainly agree with Ron that it is possible to hook-up at any time of year using āgreased lineā technique, but I have been on the water when the floating-line guys were getting skunked and the depth-chargers were doing well [and vice versa].
Given how infrequently you get a pull from a western SH in the first place [this activity has been called āpresenting the inedible to the unfeedableā], I think that all the alternatives need to be available. Plus, now that we have two handed rods, even very dense lines are relatively easy to cast.
Steelhead water varies considerably. Most steelies are in water 1-6ā deep. Vary your fly accordingly with more or less hackle, more or no added weight, heavy or light weight hooks, etc. I usually use floating lines and straight mono leader.
I use a float line to nymph and a sink tip to swing. I use a 24 ft 425 gr sink tip line. It is actually much easier to cast than my floating line. I just strip in line until about 25 ft of line are out of the tip and then start my cast. Otherwise, you overload the rod.
20 steelhead a year for 50 years.
Not on the rivers I fish.
Up north here in Washington we have taken the sink tip to extremes. I use home made lines custom built for each rod I own with loops on the ends for quick changing of tips. I also make custom sink tips for differing conditions. These tips are made of a combination of T14 or T8 and different sizes of floating line to a length of 10 to 20 feet. I will vary the lenght of T14 and the size/length of the floating section of line attached to acheive a desired grain weight for the tip.
I guess that explains a lot. Maybe thatās why Phil and I never smile when we catch 'em, I figure we had 12 fish each the day after Thanksgiving. Great Lakes steelheading - the next best thing to fishing in a hatchery! :lol:
Marty
You call those overgrown rainbows steelhead? Steelhead migrate to the salt not to an oversized bass pond.
Whoops! There I goā¦
Then again, with all the āstuffā in them thar Great Lakes, it probably amounts to salt - or worse! Those oversized bass ponds sure do manage to hold a few ārainbowsā and browns.
EDIT: I have fished for steelhead in the PNW and it is definitely a different game, mostly because the numbers of fish out there is smaller (per water volume anyhow). Iāve had some success using sink-tips (Deschutes, for instance, especially when the water temp drops into the low 40s or lower) and the Yancy multi-tips in the NF Stillaguamish and Salk/Skagit system.
Marty
Yep! We calls 'em steelhead, and we gots lots of 'em. Just in Ohio we plant 425,000 smolts each year. Cāmon over and weāll show you how to catch 'em. Oh, and no need to bring your salt shaker on this trip. We do just fine on a salt-free diet. Salt makes steel rust! Andā¦we wonāt make fun of of your fishies or their habitat.
Joe
Joe, I love it! Salt makes steel rust! I gotta get down to your neck of the woods one of these days.
Kerry, you know Martyās only messing with you, donāt you? Itās all in good fun.
Joe, just for comparison, they put 880,000 smolts into the river I just moved away from in northern California. One river. Unfortunately, slightly less than one percent make it back.
And, well, I am with Kerry. Real steelhead taste the salt!! Hee Hee.
Says the guy in the middle of the country now.
Dennis