Steelhead Success

When I first got into fly fishing, the manager of the local Orvis shop, Jim Lampros, mentioned that Northeast Ohio is part of Steelhead Alley, which also includes Northwest Pennsylvania and New York. He went on to explain the rivers start to get a run of steelhead in the fall, and it continues until late spring. This will be the time the rivers are crowded with fishermen. He wasn’t wrong.

It took two years of learning and getting skunked before I started to have success. I fumbled through nymphing and streamer techniques, learning how to make a good drift and how to use weight to keep the fly on or near the bottom. I used the popular egg patterns and stonefly imitations but struggled to get a hookup. About that time Art, who quickly became my fishing mentor, said he would tie an egg pattern for me to use. In addition, a trip to the Orvis store allowed to me to find a wigglestone fly, developed by Greg Senyo. My luck and perseverance was about to pay off.

Art's Egg, Simple but very effective.

Fishing at Helen Hazen Wyman Park in April of 2013 I finally hooked into a chromer with the egg pattern Art tied. I had gotten over the “how to catch them” and was now thrown into “how to land them”. Unfortunately, I didn’t play the fish well and it broke off after a nice 2-3 minute fight. That day I would hook into three others but was not able to land any of them. Even though I didn’t get any to the net, it was a lot of fun.


It wasn’t until the following spring that I would land my first steelhead. Again fishing at Helen Hazen Wyman Park, I landed three within a matter of an hour, two on the egg pattern and one on the wigglestone. They fought well, but now I was ready for them. From fishing for rainbow and brown trout with Brian Trow from Mossy Creek Fly Fishing, I learned how to play a fish. I felt like I graduated from some mythical steelhead school.

One of the steelhead landed on that spring day. About 18"-19" in length.

One thing I did learn is that steelhead fishing is very humbling. Someone can go out and land five or six in a morning and then not have any luck for several weeks. Since there are many rivers and parks to choose from in Northeast Ohio, picking the wrong location on any given day makes for a skunking. For as much success as I’ve had at Helen Hazen Wyman I’ve also been there more times when I was blanked. Pick any location and you take a chance that the fish will be there. If not, it’s a long day. Talking with other fishermen on the river the one comment I hate hearing is “you should have been here yesterday”. The not so funny thing is, I’ve heard that more than once and each time had no luck.

Go out and fool a fish!