DerekWhipple
Steelhead
How much does it matter to you? Do you think a steelhead would really turn down a properly presented 10mm bead because it's the wrong shade of pink?
Non-Fly Bead size/color...
- Thread starter DerekWhipple
- Start date
Rob Allen
Life of the Party
To answer your question.. no.. to answer the other questions related to beads... zipper my mouth shut.
Size and color are less about a given fish's preference than they are about water level and conditions. Low and clear usually calls for smaller beads in lighter, transluscent shades, and higher, faster water seems to favor bigger, brighter selections.
As has been said, my limited experience with beads suggests you can catch fish (especially steelhead) on just about any size/color if you get a good drift (in their face).
As has been said, my limited experience with beads suggests you can catch fish (especially steelhead) on just about any size/color if you get a good drift (in their face).
G_Smolt
Legend
Like all fishing, there are days where steelhead will eat anything orange and round, and days where you have to dial in color/size a little more thoroughly.
You'll find pressure (both angling and atmospheric), water temp/vis/color, light, and substrate all have an influence on which colors/sizes work best.
Paige
Wishing I was fishing the Sauk
I walked into the Wallace one day, too high n dirty for most people. Talked to a friend that was walking out and the only person fishing the hatchery stretch that day, he only hooked 1 fish.
High, dirty and fast, I had only about 2 feet of a seam along the black berries and stuck on the high bank with less that 1 foot of visibility.
I hooked 8 fish landed 2 in 45 minutes on little 6mm beads before it was too dark, and I didn't want to fall in while it was dark. It was a sketchy location, tough to fish and even worse trying to land fish without a net!
Lesson learned, fish see way better than we can, nor think they can, and 5 foot roll casts or lob casts can rail on fish!
High, dirty and fast, I had only about 2 feet of a seam along the black berries and stuck on the high bank with less that 1 foot of visibility.
I hooked 8 fish landed 2 in 45 minutes on little 6mm beads before it was too dark, and I didn't want to fall in while it was dark. It was a sketchy location, tough to fish and even worse trying to land fish without a net!
Lesson learned, fish see way better than we can, nor think they can, and 5 foot roll casts or lob casts can rail on fish!
Rob Allen
Life of the Party
That's my biggest struggles... I know fish can see better than we think but I just do not havecsuccess in dirty water.. I much prefer low clear and cold.. I just catch more fish then.
6mm? Well, there goes my argument about size being relative to clarity!
Indeed, they see a lot better than we give them credit for. Locating fish in places accessible from the bank can be tough in high, dirty water, but if you find them, they will often bite pretty well under those conditions.
When I used to use them, I always just went with 8mm. color generally didn't matter, but sometimes it did. I've also found that a simple eggstasy egg fly is just as effective if I'm bobber fishin' on my fly rod, so I'll go that route these days if I'm not strippin' or swingin'.
As mentioned at least once in this thread, steelhead are pretty dumb. If you put something in their face, they're likely to grab it. Swing it by in their zip code, less likely....strip it away, even less likely.
As mentioned at least once in this thread, steelhead are pretty dumb. If you put something in their face, they're likely to grab it. Swing it by in their zip code, less likely....strip it away, even less likely.
Alaska trout when feeding on spawning sockeye salmon eggs can be pretty selective as to size and color. Steelhead, on the other hand, have eaten a purple bead that was presented right. With steelhead, presentation usually supersedes size, color, or most other variables.
Pink Nighty
Legend
I imagine that has to do with feeding being a secondary priority. The trout are lining up to feed, they're going back to fridge and can pick what they want. The steelhead are on the road and need to grab what's easy and available. Including purple eggs.
I've also caught bulls swinging a chartreuse slush jelly egg. I hate bobbers.
I see this to some degree here with whitefish and trout fishing egg flies behind coho....at least color at times. Not having ever fished in AK, I dunno how it compares.
Creatch’r
Potential Spam
I believe size and color do matter for steelhead no matter what presentation you’re talking about, gear, fly, bead or spoon. Here’s why:
Every steelhead seems to have a bite radius, meaning an area around them to which they will react to a given lure or fly by biting it as it drifts by. A lot of different factors we aren’t in control of can increase or reduce this radius but our tackle is within our control and our choices do matter. I believe it to be true that the “wrong” size or color can still gets bites if it hits the “bullseye” but you will find the “right” one will increase the radius. Suddenly a steelhead will happily move to intercept instead of waiting for it to burst his little bubble. For the right bead, a steelhead may aggressively move a surprisingly long way.
If the idea is to hook more fish, what’s the better strategy? Having to blindly pinpoint every steelhead by hitting their bullseye in a 3000cfs river or potentially changing colors or sizes to match the light and water conditions and finding the one that they will seek and destroy on sight? It doesn’t take long to see the advantages of the right lure, the results speak for themselves eventually, but I find it to be especially true with beads, a bead (outside of an egg drop from spawning fish) is sort of a passive presentation. It doesn’t have the same presence in the water that demands attention like a 6” worm or even a marabou steelhead jig. It would be really really easy for a 15 pound holding steelhead to simply ignore the humble little bead floating by. I don’t want them to ignore it. I want them to help me out a little bit here and come get the damn thing. If I’m walk in fishing where I’m going to make more drifts per hole I will definitely switch a few times but I am more likely to make drastic changes for shock value because I know I’ve just pressured them. If I’m fishing by boat on the move I have to be a little more mindful of how I make tackle changes because I’m often only getting one shot at a piece of water before it’s in the rear view so I have to go with my gut. This leaves me less chances to hit bullseyes and where right color right size becomes even more meaningful IMO. One trick I really believe in for narrowing down the right color and size (without simply nailing a bunch of steelhead) is when you are getting warmer to the right bead, you will start getting regular takes from whities, trout, smolt, whatever…. If I’m fishing a particular bead through likely water and no one wants a piece of it, I’m taking it off. If I switch colors and immediately flash a few whities my confidence has gone way up that soon it will be the real deal.
I’m old school enough with bead fishing that I have a lot of confidence in 8-14mm beads even in dirty water for winter steelhead because when I started doing this, that’s all we had access to and I caught a lot of fish on them. For a long time trout beads only went up to 12mm it was a big deal when they added 14mm. Mind you I also had to hand paint every single one of those damn things to get the colors you can now just pull off a shelf. To a lot of people nowadays a 16mm bead is small. That’s their loss. For a good selection of beads for winter steelhead I’d have 12’s, 16’ and 20’s of something bright, something light, and something that catches your eye and that’s a pretty good place to start. For summer run I like 8/10/12 but as November turns to December i wouldn’t be afraid of a bigger bead if I was still fishing for them.
So there we go. I came down with the flu and wrote a novel no one asked for on beads today. Such a productive sick day lol
Every steelhead seems to have a bite radius, meaning an area around them to which they will react to a given lure or fly by biting it as it drifts by. A lot of different factors we aren’t in control of can increase or reduce this radius but our tackle is within our control and our choices do matter. I believe it to be true that the “wrong” size or color can still gets bites if it hits the “bullseye” but you will find the “right” one will increase the radius. Suddenly a steelhead will happily move to intercept instead of waiting for it to burst his little bubble. For the right bead, a steelhead may aggressively move a surprisingly long way.
If the idea is to hook more fish, what’s the better strategy? Having to blindly pinpoint every steelhead by hitting their bullseye in a 3000cfs river or potentially changing colors or sizes to match the light and water conditions and finding the one that they will seek and destroy on sight? It doesn’t take long to see the advantages of the right lure, the results speak for themselves eventually, but I find it to be especially true with beads, a bead (outside of an egg drop from spawning fish) is sort of a passive presentation. It doesn’t have the same presence in the water that demands attention like a 6” worm or even a marabou steelhead jig. It would be really really easy for a 15 pound holding steelhead to simply ignore the humble little bead floating by. I don’t want them to ignore it. I want them to help me out a little bit here and come get the damn thing. If I’m walk in fishing where I’m going to make more drifts per hole I will definitely switch a few times but I am more likely to make drastic changes for shock value because I know I’ve just pressured them. If I’m fishing by boat on the move I have to be a little more mindful of how I make tackle changes because I’m often only getting one shot at a piece of water before it’s in the rear view so I have to go with my gut. This leaves me less chances to hit bullseyes and where right color right size becomes even more meaningful IMO. One trick I really believe in for narrowing down the right color and size (without simply nailing a bunch of steelhead) is when you are getting warmer to the right bead, you will start getting regular takes from whities, trout, smolt, whatever…. If I’m fishing a particular bead through likely water and no one wants a piece of it, I’m taking it off. If I switch colors and immediately flash a few whities my confidence has gone way up that soon it will be the real deal.
I’m old school enough with bead fishing that I have a lot of confidence in 8-14mm beads even in dirty water for winter steelhead because when I started doing this, that’s all we had access to and I caught a lot of fish on them. For a long time trout beads only went up to 12mm it was a big deal when they added 14mm. Mind you I also had to hand paint every single one of those damn things to get the colors you can now just pull off a shelf. To a lot of people nowadays a 16mm bead is small. That’s their loss. For a good selection of beads for winter steelhead I’d have 12’s, 16’ and 20’s of something bright, something light, and something that catches your eye and that’s a pretty good place to start. For summer run I like 8/10/12 but as November turns to December i wouldn’t be afraid of a bigger bead if I was still fishing for them.
So there we go. I came down with the flu and wrote a novel no one asked for on beads today. Such a productive sick day lol
I’m pretty sure I have some 12 mm blue beads because of some other prior screed you wrote. I’m also not sure if I’ve ever actually fished them because I haven’t intentionally steelhead fished in a while.
My first exposure to bead fishing was for very heavily pressured Alaskan trout, feeding on sockeye eggs. They were selective as hell. If the bead didn’t match what was in the drift in color, size and speed, they would just move out of the way.
I took that method to steelhead fishing, in clear low water where the fish were visible. Using the same beads that I had used in Alaska worked pretty well for those fish, but not really as a searching pattern for fish that were not visible, so I stuck to glo-bugs until bigger, brighter, beads started to be available and then switched over to using those until moving and bad circulation in the hands really slowed down my steelhead fishing about 10 years ago.
I think that the most productive bead I used was a swirly bright orange 10mm - but I have definitely watched steelhead turn away from that bead in clear water and subsequently take a subtle 8mm nail polish special. So to answer the question at the top of the thread - Yes. Steelhead definitely will turn down a wrong bead, but really only a madman would even be fishing for steelhead in the sort of conditions where I have actually seen it happen. In normal steelhead water you can’t see the fish, and the fish can’t see a tiny bead unless it almost hits them in the face. My approach was always to match size and brightness with water clarity, and it seemed to work most of the time.
I took that method to steelhead fishing, in clear low water where the fish were visible. Using the same beads that I had used in Alaska worked pretty well for those fish, but not really as a searching pattern for fish that were not visible, so I stuck to glo-bugs until bigger, brighter, beads started to be available and then switched over to using those until moving and bad circulation in the hands really slowed down my steelhead fishing about 10 years ago.
I think that the most productive bead I used was a swirly bright orange 10mm - but I have definitely watched steelhead turn away from that bead in clear water and subsequently take a subtle 8mm nail polish special. So to answer the question at the top of the thread - Yes. Steelhead definitely will turn down a wrong bead, but really only a madman would even be fishing for steelhead in the sort of conditions where I have actually seen it happen. In normal steelhead water you can’t see the fish, and the fish can’t see a tiny bead unless it almost hits them in the face. My approach was always to match size and brightness with water clarity, and it seemed to work most of the time.
SeaRunner
Steelhead
I appreciate this and agree with lots of it. That said I don't know that I've caught on anything other than a pink 10 or 12 mm bead. Bought a pack of trout beads years ago and never felt the need to switch since it was so effective lol. I've tried the soft beads now a few times and they work too. Haven't tried the big beads yet.
I used to fish white worms a lot in the past and caught a lot of fish on them. Also had one particular river that I fished for years with good success on summers. Then 1 day for no particular reason at all I threw out a big 6 inch bubblegum pink worm, a size and color I never really used in the summer. The amount of bulls and steelhead I started hooking that day really raised my eyebrows. They really wanted something big and pink that day. Who knows why. So I agree that size and color can matter.