Where steelhead actually hold in a river

If you've fished hard for steelhead and caught nothing, the problem usually isn't your gear. It's that you spent the day casting into water that never held a fish.

This is the first of three parts on catching your first steelhead around Toronto. It's about location, and I put it first deliberately: it's the piece that decides whether the other two matter at all. The best drift in the world through empty water still catches nothing.

Why location beats gear for beginners

Steelhead aren't spread evenly through a river. They're migratory fish moving upstream, and they stack into a small number of specific lies to rest between pushes. A stretch of river might be two hundred metres long and hold fish in three places.

New anglers tend to fish the water that's easiest to stand in and cast across, which is usually the featureless middle. Meanwhile the fish are in the deep slot along the far bank, or right at the lip where the pool drops away.

Read the river as three water types

Pools

The deep, slow sections. Fish rest here, particularly in cold water and bright conditions, but a pool is bigger than the water that actually holds fish. Concentrate on the head, where fast water tumbles in and oxygenates — fresh fish often stop here first — and the tail-out, where the pool shallows and narrows before the next drop. Fish stage in tail-outs before moving up. The wide, even middle is usually the least productive part.

Runs

Moderate depth, steady walking-pace current, often with a broken surface. This is prime steelhead water and the most reliable thing to look for. A good run has enough depth that you can't clearly see the bottom and enough current to keep your float moving without racing.

Within a run, look for the slots — the darker lines where it's deeper. Fish sit in those.

Seams

Wherever fast water runs alongside slow water, there's a visible line between them. That's a seam, and it's the single most useful feature to learn to spot.

Fish hold on the slow side of a seam and feed from what the fast side carries past. It costs them little energy and delivers food. Seams form beside the main current tongue, behind boulders, off the inside of bends, and where a tributary enters. Drift the slow edge of the line, not the middle of the fast water.

How to catch your first steelhead — Part 1: reading the water

• 0:00 Where steelhead hold

What to do when you arrive at a new spot

Before making a cast, spend a few minutes doing this:

• Look before you wade. Walk the bank and find the depth changes, colour changes, and seam lines from above. Once you're standing in the river you can't see any of it.
• Find the current tongue. The main thread of fast water entering a pool tells you where the seams will be on either side of it.
• Identify three spots worth fishing, then fish those. Not the whole pool.
• Fish the near water first. The seam at your feet gets waded through by most anglers on their way to casting across it.
• Give a lie a handful of good drifts, then move. Steelhead either take or they don't. Covering more holding water beats perfecting a drift through one spot.

How to avoid wasting time on dead water

Dead water has tells: uniform shallow riffle with no depth, wide flat glides with no seam or structure, and slack backwaters out of the current. None of it is worth your morning.

The honest test is whether you can say why a fish would be in the spot you're about to fish. If the answer isn't depth, a current break, or cover, move on.

Coming in parts 2 and 3: the beginner setup I actually use, and how to float fish it effectively. If you want a head start on the drift itself, the three float fishing tips that worked for me on salmon apply just as well to steelhead.