Drift Fishing

[Rob Allen]

This isn't going to be well thought out. Just me shooting from the hip.

To me drift fishing will always be one of the most traditional types of steelhead fishing, particularly winter steelhead fishing. The last few years maybe the last decade it seems to have suffered a loss in popularity. It's sad when any form of fishing traditions fall by the way side so maybe I can inspire people to try it?
Why I prefer drift fishing? Simply because it's extremely effective. It keeps your bait/lure in the strikezone longer than most other methods.
It uses less slack line than bobber fishing so you can fish with more control. My favorite part however is that it's contact fishing. Everything is about feel.

Cautions two main things to consider on whether you should drift fish or not. The first is, yes you'll be putting small amounts of lead into our rivers. More than some other methods but as you gain skill you'll be able to minimize it.
More importantly you may at times use bait and this can have some negative affects. First of all it is possible that a steelhead could take the hooks deeper with bait than with other methods. Best practices would be to use bait only in times and places where wild fish interactions will be limited. Also consider the presence and likelihood of hooking smaller species like native sea runs or dollies. In short try to avoid hooking injuries to fish you don't want to harvest.
Nothing wrong with using bait it's a great way to harvest hatchery fish. Just use common sense.

Baits to use?
Cured salmon eggs. Some cures should be avoided as they use chemicals known to be toxic to juvenile salmonids.
Sand shrimp. They fall apart to easy for me
Cocktail shrimp
Floating bobbers . Corkies, Oakies, spin glos
Yarn.
My favorite? My favorite is two complementing colors of glo bug yarn with a small cookie on a short leader and a drop or two of Mike's shrimp oil. I like this set up because it's super easy. It makes a nice small bait that fish love and the yarn catches in their teeth making it difficult to get deep in their mouth and yet hard to spit out. Even if you don't feel them pick it up you'll feel them head shaking to get rid of.

Go try it.. it's cheap easy and fun. Cause year umm your spoon? It's too high in the water column. And your jig? It blew through too fast

 

[Stonedfish]

I wish more people knew you don’t need a 10’ leader to catch (or floss) fish.
3’ or less will get it done.
SF

 

[Rob Allen]

I wish more people knew you don’t need a 10’ leader to catch (or floss) fish.
3’ or less will get it done.
SF

I will not drift fish anything other than bait for salmon to avoid even the appearance of flossing aka outright snagging.

 

[Rvrfisher360]

When I bobber dog or fish jigs with sand shrimp for steelhead or salmon, I use magic thread to wrap it on. Usually gets me 15-20 casts before re baiting. I don’t fish bait unless I’m going for hatchery fish but sand shrimp sure is effective.

 

[Evan B]

I bobber dog and spoon fish almost always, but drift fishing is something I wanted to revisit this year. I've got a rod rigged for it that will be going to Tillamook with me this week.

Quality post!

Also, my spoons stay at or near the bottom. I mostly dead drift them. Very similar to what you'd do with a drift rig. Been a deadly way to fish them.

 

[Rvrfisher360]

I bobber dog and spoon fish almost always, but drift fishing is something I wanted to revisit this year. I've got a rod rigged for it that will be going to Tillamook with me this week.

Quality post!

Also, my spoons stay at or near the bottom. I mostly dead drift them. Very similar to what you'd do with a drift rig. Been a deadly way to fish them.

Dead drifting a 2/3 oz 50/50 rvrfisher or R&B spoon is how I’ve caught most of my steelhead.

 

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

Damn, I don't do gear in rivers (although i want to, just get to consumed with the two handers when I get in moving water), but that really got me fired up to give this technique a try. Really well thought out man, thanks for sharing.

 

[Scudley Do Right]

It's been over 30 years since I've done it. I never did it all that much as we mostly fished the salt. We used to go catch chum when I was little. When I would have one my dad would put one arm around my waist and the other on the rod while I reeled. You might tell people that are interested how you rig your weight. I remember using surgical tubing and a snap swivel. We would slide the right amount of pencil lead in to the surgical tubing. The idea being you didn't lose your whole rig if you snagged.

 

[Rob Allen]

Damn, I don't do gear in rivers (although i want to, just get to consumed with the two handers when I get in moving water), but that really got me fired up to give this technique a try. Really well thought out man, thanks for sharing.

I spent too many years swinging through runs for hatchery winters with no results then turn around and run yarn and shrimp oil through the same run and catch multiple fish..
When your goal is to remove hatchery fish before they spawn with a wild mate. You do what works.

 

[Rob Allen]

Lots of ways to rig for drift fishing.
I like doing it this way.

12 lb ultrsgreen main line to a small black barrel swivel. 10lb ultragreen leader less than 3 feet long usually less than two because I fish small rivers and want my gear close to the bottom quickly because I am not covering areas I am fishing spots. If I fished bigger rivers I might fish longer leaders. Size 4 or 6 octopus hook with a simple egg loop. I take two pieces of glo bug yarn a piece about 3/4 inch in a subtle color and a 1/2 piece in a brighter color. I want to end up with a bait about the size of a nickle. No larger than a quarter.
Weight... simply crimp a piece of 3/16 hollow cote pencil lead to the tag end of your leader after you tie it to the barrel swivel.
I like to use more lead than a lot of people I want tick tick tick. Along the bottom. Not occasional contact. I want to present slower than the flow of current.. not a Natura drift.

Anecdote about drift speed. Once I was fishing eggs and for some reason my eggs were in a zip lock and I had to carry them by hand. I got to a new small pool, rebaited and dropped the bag of eggs. I fished my way down the run and got no bites. At the bottom I cast into the deepest part of the run then wedged my rod in some alder roots. Walked to the top of the run to get my eggs. I came back to my rod and it was throbbed. I picked it up and set into a big steelhead which I lost after a few head shakes.
Point being my worn out Bait of eggs was sitting on the bottom not moving down river. Slow presentation is good...

 

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

I spent too many years swinging through runs for hatchery winters with no results then turn around and run yarn and shrimp oil through the same run and catch multiple fish..

This probably explains why my friends who gear fish don't care if I get first crack at a run

 

[Evan B]

I like running these to not be leaving lead in the river. I believe i've pretty much eliminated lead at this point.

 

[Jerry Daschofsky]

Outside of plunking, drift fishing was the other way I started fishing for salmon and steelhead in the 70s. I still have my original drift fishing set up. A Fenwick FS83C with an ambassador 5001C. Still use it to toss hardware for spinners, though I've drift fished with it a few times.

I've never used a long leader, even on the Cow. 3-4' max.

 

[Nick Clayton]

Growing up this was one of the only two ways we really targeted steelhead. The other being spinners/spoons

Seems like it's becoming something of a lost art from what I can gather from my buddies who fish rivers a lot.

 

[Rob Allen]

I like running these to not be leaving lead in the river. I believe i've pretty much eliminated lead at this point.
View attachment 1390

Being a bank fisherman I'd be concerned about losing all those in one day. Or losing all the ones of the right size. And I'd rather leave lead in the river than wads of 65 lb braid which would get some of those back

 

[SeaRunner]

Drift fishing is what I learned and all I did until I got into pinning in the late 2000's. I caught my first steelhead, a winter hatchery fish, on the Raging River on a black/red/white aerofly.

For rigging: 12 lb main maxima crystal ivory (easier to track than ultragreen; cheaper too) down to a snap swivel. To the snap swivel a barrel swivel to 18-36" leader, 8-10 lb in winter & 6 lb in summer, down to size 1-2/0 octopus hook. Loop in a piece of black surgical tubing up near the swivel to hold the lead.

We would drift fish down a run, then unclip the swivel/leader, put on a spinner, and fish back up to the head, particularly in summer. We caught a good amount of fish on the spinner that didn't take drift gear.

For lures/bait it was usually the standard corkies, cheaters, spin-n-glo with bait for hatchery fish; pink worms, aeroflys, etc. for natives. We would generally stick to eggs and sandshrimp for bait, though I eventually got into using squid tentacles with a spin-n-glo when fishing winter hatchery run fish in average to high, colored up water. I had some success with that as I think it showed them something different and was also a large enough/loud enough presentation to get the attention of moving fish. The takes on squid were usually much harder than your standard drift fishing takes.

In low and clear summer conditions we would sometimes fish muddler minnows on drift gear and those often took fish when nothing else was working.

 

[Paige]

It was the only way to fish for steelhead as a kid in the 70's - 80's and still did it in the 2000's. It has been a while since I have done it though.

I loved to walk into the local little hatchery river where everyone would use floats and limit out in under a half hr drift fishing.

 

[Stonedfish]

I fished a lot back in the day with some folks from G Loomis who showed me a great light way to set up for drift fishing. Just run your mainline through your rubber tubing then you could snell your hook into an egg loop, no leader required.
Add your pencil lead and adjust your leader length.
Caught a lot of fish on that set-up using a light weight with a piece of prawn, crawdad tail or small skein of eggs. Lots of trout type bites that turned into steelhead hookups.
The only downside was your pencil lead would slide down the line at times if you snagged the bottom but no harder to re-adjust then how you’d adjust the depth for a slip bobber today.
SF

 

[Nick Clayton]

I fished a lot back in the day with some folks from G Loomis who showed me a great light way to set up for drift fishing. Just run your mainline through your rubber tubing then you could snell your hook into an egg loop, no leader required.
Add your pencil lead and adjust your leader length.
Caught a lot of fish on that set-up using a light weight with a piece of prawn, crawdad tail or small skein of eggs. Lots of trout type bites that turned into steelhead hookups.
The only downside was your pencil lead would slide down the line at times if you snagged the bottom but no harder to re-adjust then how you’d adjust the depth for a slip bobber today.
SF

I ran that exact setup quite a bit as a kid. My step dad didn't approve so it had that added bonus lol. Mostly he thought I'd lose more setups that way due to the lead not really being rigged to break away when hung up, but I never really noticed an issue.

 

[Paige]

That same little river would be so low when it would open you couldn't fish it with any weight, what we called free drifting eggs. No weight, no leader just a hook on the mainline and eggs, 95% of it was sight fishing, we would just kill em doing that too!
Some times even a swivel would be too much weight!