Steelhead question / new to Lake Ontario

[gw2kpro]

Hello! Have spent several years chasing eyes on Erie. Decided to try some salmon fishing this year out of Olcott.

Came up 3 times in July and August, 6 days of fishing total. Did surprisingly well (I think) for a noob on the kings mostly on flasher fly, flasher spoon and solo spoon rigs, probably pulled 50 kings total.

That's the only type of fish we caught on any of the days we fished. Zero steelies. Some days we were fishing 90-130 fow, some days working out to 350-450.

Tried running some rigs I thought would take steelies. Smaller dodger/fly rigs (6 inch orange dodger / copper blue colored steelhead flies) run a bit higher in the water column on dipsy 3 setting. Tried some cleos. Tried some smaller stinger spoons stacked higher on the riggers.

Never had a taker. Guys on the radio getting some, saw pics of beautiful steelies on here being caught while we were up.

Any advice for targeting them in summer? Do you guys target them or get them "by accident" chasing kings?

Any help appreciated.

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[skinny420]

I'm a noob basically too....but there are days you can't get any and days you can't run too many lines cause you can't keep them off your lines. Usually just spoons does the trick and I'm surprised you didn't catch any. I've got them off boards, cheated riggers, dipsys, copper. Pretty much anything you throw at them sometimes.

[Firechief48]

This was the first year in awhile that we didn't get any.  I myself usually don't target them when I'm fishing deep for salmon but occasionally I will send a shorter copper out on a board.  Most of the time my steelies come off free sliders using orange Evil Eyes. When I'm running the weights down deep my rule of thumb is the slider will be 1/2 way down to the weight. Usually that's right about where the steelies will be.

[TyeeTanic]

Definitely the biggest trick is to get them out of warmer water. If you're catching kings at 50 to 60 ft, the steelhead are there are 20 to 30 ft (actually depends on the water temp profile).  We target kinds at 48F and steelies come in more like 52 to 54F.

 

The other thing is the pattern.  Most of my steelies have come on white tackle, like a wonder bread spoon.

[gw2kpro]

Thanks for the replies and info guys. Much appreciated.

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