Patience leads to nice fish on St. Joseph River
March 18, 2004
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER
ST. JOSEPH -- To lift a line from an old song, what a difference a day makes. Monday's sunshine and mild temperatures were replaced Tuesday by snow, wind and sub-freezing chill.
Ken Neidlinger, one of Michigan's most experienced steelhead and salmon guides, dipped a hand into the St. Joseph River over the stern of his 24-foot Carolina Skiff and said, "Boy, that water is cold. Thirty-seven, 38 degrees. It should be a lot warmer at this time of year."
It had been a slow morning for steelhead fishing. Neidlinger specializes in the drop-back technique, letting Flatfish and Hot-N-Tot lures work in the current behind the boat while he uses the motor and drag chains to back the lure down the river and into places the fish like to lie.
"When they're aggressive, they just smack the lures," he said. "Steelhead are really territorial, and they will attack something that comes into their territory even if they aren't feeding."
The previous day, Neidlinger's three clients landed eight steelhead and a brown trout in five hours, an average day on one of the state's top rivers for winter and spring steelhead fishing.
On this day, we had one hit after two hours of fishing, a steelhead that spat the hook seconds later.
"I thought we'd hammer them today, after what we did yesterday," Neidlinger said. "But we're not beaten yet."
Ben Mammina of St. Joseph has been fishing with Neidlinger for more years than either cares to admit, and Mammina never misses an opportunity to stick the needle in.
"Don't get discouraged," Mammina said, smiling sweetly. "There's always yesterday."
While many rainbow trout spend their entire lives in their birth streams, steelhead are a subspecies or race of rainbows that leave the stream when they are a few months old. They head for the nearest big water to feed for three or four years before returning to spawn.
Native to the West Coast rivers of the United States and Canada, steelhead originally ran to the Pacific Ocean. But starting in the 1870s, steelhead were planted in streams around the Great Lakes, and it turned out that they didn't care if the big water was salt or fresh, as long as it contained plenty of bait fish.
Steelhead ran in a few streams for the next century, but major plantings by all of the Great Lakes states and Canada from the 1960s until today have led to steelhead runs in dozens of streams. The runs surpass the fish's original home range, and the Great Lakes now boast the best steelhead fishing outside of Alaska.
There are two major runs of steelhead. Summer-run fish enter the rivers around the first of July and spawn in mid-winter. Winter-run fish begin their upstream migration in fall and spawn in late winter and spring.
Steelhead are closely related to the Pacific salmon that also have been planted in the Great Lakes. All of the salmon die after spawning, but about 10-15 percent of steelhead survive the stresses of spawning and drop back down the rivers to the Great Lakes. There, they continue to grow, and these are the fish that become giant trophy steelhead as they return to spawn a second and sometimes even a third time.
Most stream anglers fish for winter-run steelhead, largely because they are in the rivers in good numbers as the snow melts and the weather warms from February through March, and they can be caught from a boat or by wading. The most popular way to fish for them is with salmon or steelhead eggs as bait, but they also are revered targets of fly anglers, who use everything from nymph patterns to streamers.
The average Michigan steelhead is eight to 10 pounds, but fish in the teens are relatively abundant, and each year a handful of anglers land fish that break the 20-pound mark.
The fish earned their nickname from their shiny, steel-gray back and chrome-bright sides. Steelhead fresh from the big lakes are so mirror-bright they are called "chromers," and most fish have a wash of rose-red along their sides that often intensifies as their colors darken during spawning.
The steelhead has an amazing fighting ability. Many anglers think it is the toughest fish in fresh water, and it is also renowned for its acrobatic ability, often leaping two or three times its own length from the water a half-dozen times during the battle.
The fish Neidlinger was targeting this day were winter-run steelhead, but the St. Joseph draws both strains, and steelhead can be caught there for about nine months of the year.
About 90 percent of the time, Neidlinger fishes with Flatfish lures, which have been around for about 70 years. They're nearly always gold or gold with orange-red stripes.
"When these fish feed, they feed on a lot on eggs," Neidlinger said. "When you put those red and gold lures in the water, they are just about the same color as the eggs."
Neidlinger glared at Mammina and said, "Remember, the longer you go without a strike, the closer you are to the next one."
The words were barely out of his mouth before a rod started to bounce and Neidlinger yelled, "Fish, fish." Clayton Benson of St. Joseph stepped out of the cabin, kept cozy by a kerosene heater, and lifted the rods from their holder on the side of the cockpit.
The fish took line steadily and bent the rod hard.
"I think this one must be foul-hooked," Benson said. "I can't even move it."
But a minute later the fish showed itself at the surface with the lure embedded firmly in the corner of its jaw, and it became evident that it was pulling so hard because it was a very large fish.
Benson played it carefully, letting the fish run when it wanted to and recovering line when he could. After about 10 minutes he brought it to the side of the boat, and Neidlinger slipped the net under a 15-pound steelhead with beautiful rose stripes glowing along its sides.
"That's the way to play these fish. Just take your time," Neidlinger said. "When you pick up the rod, either the fish is well hooked, and you won't lose it if you play it right, or it's only lightly hooked, and it will get off no matter what you do.
"Sometimes the steelies head-butt a lure to get it out of their territory. When that happens, they might get hooked on the nose or the outside of the head, and it's probably going to pull loose. I always look at the hook after we lose a fish, and if I see scales, I know we hooked it in the head somewhere. They don't have scales in their mouths."
Ken Neidlinger may be reached at 269-983-7816.[/b]
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