Great Lakes Dude #12 | Float Fishing for Steelhead with Tom Blotzer – Rigging Tips, Winter Tactics

Jeff (2s): Welcome to the Wet Fly. Swing, great Lakes. I’m your host, Jeff Liske, AKA Great Lakes dude. Well, I hope you enjoyed the last episode with Darcy Egan, longtime playing dealer editor for the sports section, longtime friend. But this episode is gonna get pretty interesting if you’re listening and wanna hear information about the southern shores of Lake Erie and what’s going on in the famous steelhead alley, AKA Rainbow Alley. I have a longtime friend and the active president from the Ohio Central Basin and Steelheaders. We are gonna dive into what’s going on with the programs, what to expect in the next four or five years. Jeff (48s): We’re gonna talk about land praise, we’re gonna talk about some fishing. We’re just gonna talk about everything to bring you up to date. And Tom is the guy, and it seems like only yesterday in 1984 that I was sitting at the Rod Maker’s shop in Strongsville, Ohio, and I was in a steering community of 12. The owner Don Gun Ling wanted us to start a steelhead program and a club, and he was the driving force that started it. And then a good friend of mine, Mike Spino, bless his soul, he’s now not with us, but he was the first president and we were not involved with Ohio at all. Jeff (1m 31s): We were a chapter of the Michigan Steelheaders for the first couple years, but it seems like just yesterday that I was sitting in a basement. And now Tom is at the helm of this great club that is advanced 200 folds, 40 years later, and I’m proud to present him today. Tom, welcome to the show. Tom (1m 54s): Thank you, Jeff. Like you said, I’m the current president of the OCBS. I joined OCBS back in 1990, and I really moved here from Pittsburgh. Didn’t know a whole lot about steelhead fishing or anything back then, but I would often see in the newspaper stories about Jeff Quey and Mike Spino chasing steelhead all around Ohio and, and Pennsylvania, and thought, boy, this is pretty good. Actually, I originally wanted to start fishing for salmon, but then my couple of bikers, oh, you don’t wanna catch a salmon, you want to kill steelhead. They got a much better fight, and they’re a lot more fun to catch. So started fishing for, for them in 1990, and it just became an addiction maybe, or a passion is probably more it. Tom (2m 37s): And I’ve been fishing for ’em ever since I joined the Ohio Central Basin Steelheaders back in about 1990. And like I said, I moved from Pittsburgh, didn’t really know anybody here, and it was a great way to be able to meet other like-minded anglers out in, in Ohio to, you know, network with and, and learn about the fishery. I was, I became vice president in 1998 and I was vice president under Joe Movic was our president prior to that till 2016 and then 2016 to President I, I, I’ve been the president and it’s, it’s, it is a lot of work, but it is a lot of fun too. There’s a lot of, a lot of great things that we were able to do, you Jeff (3m 16s): Know, to, I can’t thank all the work that all the past presidents have did and how much we’ve advanced. And I think as we dive into what the club really does, is I think it’s really important for people to understand that any fishing club, the board and the president, and the vice president and all the volunteers, this is a non-paid volunteer position. Tom and all the past presidents put in hundreds of hours a year to make this clubs and these clubs successful. And when we started the club and we got, our goal was to get more fish stock because the program was not really strong. And then Tom’s leading the charge to make sure it continues that way. Jeff (3m 58s): But Tom, why don’t you give us a little of intel like, you know, about the club, where we at members wise and things like that, man. Tom (4m 5s): Yeah, we we’re currently at 330 members, which is really our all time high. There’s a lot of interest in steelhead fishing as, as I know, you go out on the rivers, you could see lots of, lots of people out there fishing for them. But our club really is trying to promote and protect the steelhead fishery. You know, we’re really trying to work with the division of wildlife, with landowners, with, you know, the Scenic river groups, different people to protect and, and promote the, the steelhead fishing. The club focuses on angular education, river conservation and, and river access. Those are some of our primary things we, we work on. And really, the Ohio Division of Wildlife has really created a great fishery here in Ohio for us to enjoy some of our activities. Tom (4m 50s): You know, we start out the year with a, with our OCBS fishing Expo, and we’ve actually been doing that also for 30 years. We always hold it in September. The first 10 were actually held at the pen penitentiary Glen facility in Lake County. And actually back then we called it the steelhead conclave. And then we, because of some construction things, we couldn’t have it there. So we moved at that point, we moved to the Rocky River Nature Center in North Olmsted, and we’ve been having it there for the last 20 years. It’s a great facility. There’s a lot of room there for vendors to set up. We always have eight hours of steelhead seminars from the top, top anglers. Tom (5m 33s): We try to cover all the different techniques. We’ll have the Division of Wildlife give an update on the Steelhead fishery, and we will have seminars on how to catch steelhead, both with the fly and spin center pin as well as spay fishing. So we try to have something for everyone and it really, it, it kicks off the steelhead season right about then is when the fish start, start poking in the lower sections of the rivers. We have also a great group of vendors, conservation groups and fishing clubs. A lot of fly fly tying there, demonstrations going on, and you know, a lot of vendors there to sell you and demonstrate all the, the latest products in steelhead fishing, but that, that kicks off the season. Tom (6m 18s): Then we have monthly meetings from September to April to April. We split those meetings from the, between the east and the west side. Our east side location is the firehouse and Willoughby Hills. Our, our West West location is actually at the mouth of the Rocky River, at the Rocky River, Emerald Necklace Marina, and both are very nice facilities. And for each meeting we try to bring in a, a very good speaker, someone that’s going to, you know, help our members members learn about how to catch steelhead. As well as, you know, some conservation topics we go over as well. Tom (6m 60s): We have an excellent Christmas party. That’s the one meeting that we don’t have actually a speaker at, but it’s a great time to celebrate the holidays and have some comradery with, with your fellow fishing buddies. And we ha we hold that at the winking lizard in, in Bedford Heights each, each year. Another popular item that we do is we have the, our, our catch and release steelhead tournament. And we’ve been doing that probably for 40 years, and it’s a, it’s evolved over the years, but right now it, it is five separate events. We have two in November, one in December, and then two in March. And like I said, it’s a catch and release tournament. You have to fish with a buddy and you know, they verify your catch. Tom (7m 42s): And then the top six fish that you catch throughout the five days, the five tournament dates are what’s used to determine a winner. And, you know, the winner gets a small prize but gets bragging rights and gets the, gets gets the plaque or a silver buckle is the other option. Jeff (7m 60s): Let’s, maybe we should backtrack before we dig into what the club does for conservation too, because I think we should talk about why get into a club, right? So think about it this way, even if you only get the chance to steal head fish once or twice, but you’re passionate about it or any, any club that’s protecting the fishery, it is the speaking voice from the anglers to the Division of Wildlife divisions, regardless of what state you’re in. If it’s Michigan, steelheaders, New York Steelheaders Guide Service. But Tom is the leading driving force to keep, you know, I don’t like to use the word pressure on the OD NR, but I think we should say maybe keep ’em in check, Tom. Jeff (8m 40s): I think that’s a really good thing is that we have 330 members and it’s nothing to do with votes, but I think a, it’s like, oh geez, you know, the Steelheaders really are taking notice that we’re not stocking enough. We should, you know, they throw us a little dog bone or appease us with some type of meeting, but I think it’s really good for clubs and the division of Wildlife divisions to, to communicate well, which they do with you. Excellent. They invite us. So that’s one reason you need to join the club. And then the tournaments, you know, some people aren’t into the tournament thing, but it’s a catch and release tournament. But I will say one thing that’s really interesting is it gives the platform of how the fisheries health really is like are, we’re not, if we send out 25 anglers out there that day and no one gets, if the fishing conditions are good and we only bring in four or five fish, we can bring that data to the state and saying, Hey, it’s sort of like a mini, you know, a mini Creole survey, you know, Tom, but that’s, just, think about getting in your local club. Jeff (9m 39s): Think about join the Steelheaders even if you’re in the West Coast, just to keep up on the notes and the newsletters to see what’s going on in that area, our area. But now let’s dig in a little bit about conservation. That’s something that I think people don’t realize that we do too, is why don’t you explain what else we do for maybe the, you know, the river cleanups and stuff, Tom? Tom (9m 57s): Yeah, we’ve been supportive of river cleanups pretty much probably for the last 25 years, roughly, man. Yeah, it’s been, it’s been a while. It’s a time flies. It really does. We had, you know, one of the ones I’m most proud of is we had, we started an as Bulah River cleanup. We were, well the Bulah River actually came off of the EPA listed, you know, pollution list that came off of their about four or five years ago. And, and I was at a meeting, we were talking about that, and it’s like, well, you know, they, they cleaned up the water, but there’s, there’s really a lot of trash, there’s a lot of homeless people that live along the, the river and there just a lot of trash here. Tom (10m 39s): I said, that river really needs a good cleanup. So we partnered with the Chue Soil and Water District and started the cleanups and, and this year we will be our fourth annual one on Saturday, April the 12th. But every year we’ve, we’ve taken out six to 10 or 12 tons, actually tons of, of litter off of the ASHRAE River. I mean, it’s really made a big improvement. Just, you know, that’s, that’s probably the one I’m most proud of. But we also partner every year, and this is our 22nd this year with the Coot Creek cleanup, and that’s gonna be the Saturday, may the third. And we’ve been working, we originally started with the Friends of Coot Creek and they evolved into the Scenic River Advisory Group. Tom (11m 26s): And we have been there to support all, all 22 of the cleanups. Often we have more people coming from our club than, than from the local area to do the, the cleanups. And, and that has really made, I think, a big difference in the, in the fishery there and the watershed. Grand River also has a cleanup and we, we, we’ve been supporting that over the years. That’s gonna be the Saturday May the 24th. And we started supporting the, the Grand River cleanups back in the 1990s in partnership with the old Grand River Partners. And that was the group that, that evolved into the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, or they had been absorbed by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. Tom (12m 6s): And right now Western Reserve Land Conservancy does take the lead and the Grand River cleanup, and it’s a land and a canoe based cleanup, generally from Harpers Field down to Hidden Valley and also the Rocky River cleanup. This is gonna be the 23rd annual Rocky River cleanup this Saturday, June the seventh. And we worked with the Metro Parks and Rocky River Watership Partners, watershed Partners over the last 23 cleanups. And that’s one of the rivers, it’s actually pretty clean. The Metro Parks does a good job of keeping that area clean, but, but there is still trash for us to pick up there, so, Jeff (12m 44s): Yeah. You know, it seems like you said you don’t realize how fast, you know, one good thing about getting old is that, you know, you have a lot of experience, but it’s like the first time we cleaned up Conant, I remember that we get assigned to our little areas. You didn’t have to go really far to get like your entire day’s worth. And it was like, now 20 years later, we go back and we assign geographic areas along the river and it’s sometimes hard to find trash now. So I think 20 years of hard work, 75 tires ki you know, we’ve had canoes in back busting ropes and tractors getting stuck. Remember the last time we got, we got Andy’s tractor stuck cleaning up another section. Tom (13m 25s): I do remember that. And yeah, Jeff (13m 27s): Right. So it’s like the cleanups are really good for the, you know, the ecosystem. But I will say it is a great place to interact with the other club members, right? We have a good time afterwards. We don’t do it eight hours, we just basically do it for a half a day. We eat pizzas, we talk fishing stories. And so if you have time, even if you’re not in Ohio or if you have your favorite river cleanup in your own home state, I highly recommend that you get into it just a, it’s a good way to interact with your fisheries and keep the water systems, you know, clean. But Tom (13m 57s): One other comment I wanted to make on that too, there’s one thing I’m gonna try to promote more with the cloud this year is I take the, just when you go to the grocery store, you get the little plastic bags, I try to take a couple of those and put ’em in my vest. Yeah. And when I’m out walking back to my car or I’m in a parking area and I see some trash, I always pick it up. I said, you know, you want to keep our rivers clean and you want, you don’t want to have that, you know, bad impression of the anglers here going in littering. Jeff (14m 22s): So, right. And you did a great job leading everybody, all the presidents and everybody. It’s peer pressure, right Tom? I think, I don’t think it’s members that are involved with an association or a club that are doing the trash and getting the, you know, the bad, you know, the bad black eye on that whole fishery. I think everybody is really nice to each other. I think that, you know, but that’s a great tip. Put the bag in the back back or backpack or stuff it down your waiters. Put a beer can or two in there. It can’t hurt. It’s a great tip, man. But so talk about a little about Tom (14m 51s): The, the grant, you know, the grant project and the Scenic River, how things changed. Talk us a little bit about that. Yeah, we, we’ve been supporting kids fishing really ever since I’ve been in a club generally. You know, in the beginning we would, we would send volunteers to the, the kids fishing derbies and we would also, you know, pay for lunch or donate some, some money towards the event. But the Division of Wildlife created a, a grant program about 10 years ago. And we apply for grants from the Division of Wildlife where they get money from the, the sale of licenses. I think it’s coming from a federal, a federal fund. And we apply for grants as well as we put club money into each event. But we’ve been donating about $10,000 to the Cleveland Metro Parks, who has three events. Tom (15m 37s): They have the two East and West side Kids Derby in May, and then they also have a fall family fishing derby. We donate money to the Medina Kids fishing derby that they have as part of their Earth Day celebration. And we also donate to the Lake County Metro Parks. They have a, a Spring Spring Kids fishing derby and then also a fall family fishing derby. And, you know, we’ve been doing that. Our members also volunteer to go and, and help teach the kids to fish. ’cause that basically they are our, our our future. And, and basically the money we donate generally goes to, to mostly to stocking as well as, you know, buying, you know, different supplies that are necessary to run the events. Tom (16m 21s): And we also get very involved with the, we’re trying to get more involved now with the, with the Scenic Rivers Committees. We are regularly attending the Cognac Creek Ash Debu and Grand River Scenic River meetings, try to support conservation on all our steelhead tributaries and, you know, trying to get involved. And I know at the last co Creek advisory meeting, which was last week, we, we agreed to, to put up some new signs for, for the, you know, along with the Division of Wildlife there, there’s one we’re gonna be putting in at, at Kefi Road and a new sign that we’re gonna be putting in at the, at the, the center or the Creek Road Bridge area. Dave (17m 3s): Fish to Fly Guide Service is dedicated to sharing the incredible fly fishing opportunities around Jackson Hole. Whether floating the Scenic Snake River in search of native cutthroat trout or hiking into the mountains to explore pristine tributaries every day on the water is an adventure. You can join them for an unforgettable fly fishing experience in the heart of the Tetons at fish, the fly.com San Juan Rod works started with a simple belief, great fly rods and gear shouldn’t cost a fortune as a family run company. They focus on building high quality fly fishing products that perform on the water without the premium price tag. You can try San Juan Rod works for 30 days risk free right now, and if you’re not satisfied, send it back for a full refund. Dave (17m 45s): You can go to San Juan rod works.com. That’s S-A-N-J-U-A-N rod works.com. Jeff (17m 53s): That’s great. Tom, you know, I think the Scenic River program, and then we should probably now this would be a good time to interject and just for the info and what exactly and how, when, if you do approach any of the streams in Ohio and in Pennsylvania to do some steelhead fishing along the south shores of Lake Erie is, let’s talk a little bit about, just because it’s not a, it’s a deemed, a scenic river doesn’t allow you just to roam freely like a national park does it? Let’s talk a little bit about, you know, the rules, the dos and the don’ts about stream access. Jeff (18m 36s): Yeah, Tom (18m 36s): Like you said, if it’s a scenic river, that’s really just putting in some rules to, to protect the fishery where you cannot, you know, cut down all the trees up to the bank that is gonna create erosion and things. It’s, it’s sort of an agreement between the landowners to, to preserve, you know, basically the, the wild and scenic aspects of the river. So no, that does not give you permission to fish there. You really, obviously there’s only scenic rivers. They, they all have either the ULA or Lake County Metro Parks have public access areas. But if you’re not on a metropark area or a public fishing area, you really have to ask permission from, from the landowner. Tom (19m 18s): And that’s whether it’s posted or not. Obviously, if someone doesn’t want you there, they’re gonna post it. If it’s not posted, you’re still really not permitted to to go there. The landowner owns the, the, the land underneath the, underneath the water. So if you’re waiting in or fishing in the, in the water on their property, that that’s trespassing. So you really need to get permission from the landowners to be able to, to fish even though it is a scenic river. Jeff (19m 43s): Yeah, no, you know, the interesting thing is, is that, you know, we have these little runoff rivers and let’s just, if people are just tuning in, let’s just make sure this is Ohio and Pennsylvania. This is not in Michigan. So Michigan has different rules and regulations, but in the majority of New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio, these rules apply. And I think the best way to to access this is if you go to the DNR sites, they actually have stream maps that will show you the public access areas in the private ones. Every river has quite a bit of public. And I think as we dig into this, Tom and I will start talking a little bit about reasons why you stock certain streams is just how many miles of public access compared to private. Jeff (20m 32s): We’ll, we’ll dig into that a little bit, but I think it’s important to know where you stand, that the landowners own the bottom of the river and for sure that you should be as polite as you possibly can if you are in doubt of where you’re at, if you get, get approached to make sure you approach it like the landowner’s talking to you. Not some rude angler that has the right to go fishing there, but, well, that’s good. Tom, I think we clarified that. You wanna add anything else about that? About the access and that? Tom (21m 3s): Not really. I mean there is a lot of public access. Yes. You know, the metro parks have really done a great job of, of you know them along with, I know the Western Reserve has purchased a lot of property along, but if you, you’re fishing Coot Creek probably has the least amount of public access. But, but from Creek Road down, you know, it’s, it’s pretty much the good majority of that’s public. You know, the ash bulah, you know, from, from the hospital area all the way up to the Covered bridge, that’s all a public area. And you know, the Grand River has quite a few metro parks there and as well as the chagrin and, and Rocky or Rocky River is almost all public access. And the Vermilion has quite a bit of lake or Lorain County metro Parks access there too. Tom (21m 45s): So all these rivers, there’s plenty of areas and good, good areas too to fish, you know, you know, you can get on a public access there. Jeff (21m 54s): Yeah, I mean thanks to Steve Madewell, he was the deputy director of Lake County, which has a lot of the streams flow and the tributaries flow in it. He had the foresight to really put pressure on the board of directors to purchase land in advance to give us lots of areas. But maybe we should touch base about how Pennsylvania was able to instill a Lake Erie access and trout salmon sort of stamp a little extra fee and what they’re doing with that buying land. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit on what they’ve got going? Tom (22m 27s): Yeah, they have a, a, a, a trout stamp, the steelhead or Lake Erie stamp, I should call it, that they, that you pay for with your fishing license each year. And they use that fund either to purchase land or to purchase easements. In the case of the easements, they, they’re, you know, the landowner still owns a property, but they’re giving permission to anglers to access the, the river in their, in their area. And, and that has been a very successful program. I, I don’t have the exact numbers here, but it’s many miles of additional access that they’ve opened up for anglers with that program. Jeff (23m 1s): Yeah, I think, I think the foresight of all this, it won’t happen when I’m on this side of the dirt, but if you get a little piece of easement, it might only be a small piece that really is not enough to open to the public. And then you get another mile away, you have another landowner that deeds it over to the children or whatever. And now you have these two small pieces and then all of a sudden the connected properties between the two 15 years later comes available. It, now you can open up this cord door like recently opened it up that it could be over a half a mile of river section. So it’s a, it’s a waiting, a wait and see type game. Jeff (23m 40s): But it’s like very important to look down the future for the generations to be able to access these rivers. And you know, like I said, for me and you, we’ve seen a, we’ve seen a lot of growth, but, you know, I think it’s only gonna get better as we understand how to manage this, the fishery and how to get the, you know, the, the landowners and on board with the farmers, everybody else too. But yeah, Tom (24m 1s): And you know, one of the things I’d have to add to that is, is definitely be respectful when you’re out there on the rivers that if you are, if you have permission to fish in someone’s property, you know, be, be very careful. ’cause sometimes when they, the reason some of the properties get shut down is because of, you know, bad behavior by, by, by certain anglers, you know, they, Jeff (24m 23s): Yeah. Not only to the landowner, but imagine yourself to be, be kind to the, you know, the etiquette to the other anglers that are on the stream. Everybody from people canoeing to, you know, the aluminum hats up in Michigan, everybody has the right to the water. We’re all fighting to get there on the water and enjoy a day. But I would say, you know, always ask permission from your fellow angler. Like if it’s really crowded, you know, say, Hey, do you mind me jumping in on the top of this run and fishing with you? Or, Hey, how long you been there? And just open a conversation rather than assuming that, you know, you’re gonna squeeze in there. Pennsylvania’s a little bit different, you know, there’s a, it’s got a high pressure amount of anglers as you know, and it’s shoulder to shoulder and I think what they call it combat fishing, right? Jeff (25m 6s): Anywhere. Yep. New York has it too, but everybody work with everybody. Support if there’s any excess stamps or extra fees, support that. And then, I don’t know, let’s, let’s see, let’s move on to, maybe let’s move on to the steelhead program because it’s changed dramatically. So maybe we should just start and fill in everybody how it’s going and where it’s going. Tom (25m 34s): Yeah, you know, the history of the, of the Ohio steelhead basically, I, I think they originally started stalking salmon, didn’t they? Jeff? Jeff (25m 42s): They did. They had the coho and the Chinook salmon program. And my first club that I involved with was the Chagrin River Salmon Association in 1971. And Salmon, of course brought out legal, legal snagging, which you can only imagine what type of circus that was in the Great Lakes. So, but those eventually, and me, I should probably clarify about this. So the salmon, because of the, you could, you know, you could snag them and then they out loud snagging. So then the people would do the, the take a doll fly jig and turn the, the hook sidewards and they would still snag them. The drawback with the salmon is, is that once it returns into the river system to try to reproduce it perishes, it goes away. Jeff (26m 28s): So you’re paying the same amount of money for that, comparatively speaking to a rainbow or a genetically steelhead type strain that will, they don’t die after they spawn, they go out to the lake regardless if it’s the ocean or the, or the Great Lakes. And they come back in multiple times, sometimes as many as six years. But generally speaking, three to four, five being that six is a questionable. But yeah. Tom, so maybe you can just start, elaborate where it started and we can work our way through. Tom (26m 54s): Yeah. So they weren’t getting the best, I guess, return for their money. They, they, they didn’t have enough Sam and returning, I guess, for the investment, so that they made a decision around the late, around the 1980s that they were gonna switch over to a steelhead. And they started out with a, a London strain, which was a, an Ohio developed strain of, it was actually a domestic rainbow. It actually wasn’t even a steelhead, I think they called it a steelhead, but it was really domestic rainbow. And it returned in pretty good numbers in the fall. But that was it. It didn’t really come back in the winter, in the spring. And one of the issues they had with these fish, because they were domestic rainbows, not steelhead, is when they’d s stocked them in the lower section of the river is a lot of them just stayed there and they didn’t really go back out in the lake and then return, they didn’t have that genetics of a steelhead. Tom (27m 43s): So they went along with, with that. And then, and then around 1993, they went with a false stocking because they wanted to try to save some money. So that way, you know, they would hatch the eggs in the spring and they’d raise them to be maybe three or four inches. They would s stock them in the fall. That way they didn’t have to pay to feed them, et cetera, to, to grow them until the spring. Well, well that was a a, a bad decision. I actually, I mean it, they did that for three years and, and the fishery pretty much crashed. And that was one of the times when with the club, there was a lot of controversy, a lot of discussion with the division of Wildlife, you know, what are you guys doing? We, we, you know, the program’s really fallen apart. Tom (28m 24s): And, and at that time, you know, Phil Hillman, he, they, him and his, and I think Kevin Kale, they, they, they studied different options and they wanted to go to, they decided to go with a, a wild steelhead, which was coming from the little Manistee River in Michigan. So they, and they, and they decided at that time that the, the fall stocking wasn’t, wasn’t working. So they, they went to a spring stocking and, and one of the big differences there is is having a fish that’s seven, eight inches, maybe nine inches long they’re stocking that has a better survival rate. You know, I think a lot of the smaller fish they stocked in the spring just became fish food and never, never grew to mature fish that that would come back. Tom (29m 6s): So, so starting in 1996, we started stocking 100% Manistee fish, which was a major, major improvement. That’s a, a true steelhead, a wild steelhead. It was, you know, excellent at survival, being able to go out where they were estimating, I think the Londons were coming back at one or 2% return. The manes were coming back at 10, 12% returns, which was great. That’s amazing. Yeah. And then in 19 97, 1 of the big things, additions or the, the key one to, to our steelhead fishery today is that there was a private trout farm, I guess you’d call it in, in cast, that that went bankrupt and, and it was up for sale and some of the people in the club as well as some of the other local politicians and, and anglers really advocated for purchasing that. Tom (30m 3s): And, and the, and I know some of the club members worked with Governor Voinovich to convince him that, hey, this is a, a good, a good, a good deal. So they ended up purchasing the Castelli Fish hatchery for 1.35 million in 1997. And that really gave them a, a, a real, a really great facility as well as, one of the biggest issues with, with raising trout or steelhead in, in Ohio is, is having that cold water source. So with the blue holes there, they had a great cold water source. So, so starting in 1997, they were able to get IED eggs from Michigan that were from the Manistee and they were able to start raising them. Tom (30m 46s): And we had manistee, they, it went great. They went from about two, 200,000 the first couple years of the hatchery up to around two the year 2001. They, they, they went over 400,000 and stocked manies all the way up through all the way. It was about 20 years all the way up through 2016. And the manistee created a great fishery. There are strong fish mostly come back in the winter and the spring, but if you have, you know, good, good fall rains and that you will get some fish coming back in in the fall as well. And then in, in 2016 we started to have some, some issues. Tom (31m 27s): Michigan wasn’t able to supply us with all the eggs that we needed for the program. So, so the Division of Wildlife reached out to Wi Wisconsin and started to get the Chambers Creek and Rosca strain of fish. And from 2016, really until 2020, there was a, a mixture of Manistee, chambers Creek and ROSCAs. And that created an excellent fishery. Yeah, we, we really thought the manistee fishery was good, which it was. And then when you added in these Chambers Creek and Rosca fish, you really had a, I mean the, the diversity I think really improved the, the, you know, the steelhead returns for sure. Jeff (32m 10s): So, you know, this is really good point now. So there’s a lot of veterans maybe gonna listen to podcast here and there’s gonna be a lot of just, just, people are just like in wonder of like, why is the fishery better in the spring, better in the, you know, the winter when, why in the fall? Mother nature has a lot to do with it, what we’ll get into. But let’s just clarify one thing is that there are spring spawning fish, there are winter spawners and then there’s fall. So depending on the strain depends on when the run’s gonna be. But let’s, the 20 years of manistee, it was very predictable. These fish, like Tom said, would come in, but when we get a fish in the hatchery, if it’s a, if it’s the eyed egg, it takes an entire year for that fish to mature to what’s called a smelting stage. Jeff (32m 59s): And that’s generally in April. So we get it in April, the, they get the eyed eggs, they hatch and the hatchery one year later they’re around anywhere from what, six to nine inches. You know, Tom was saying that when they go through that smelting process is when the states sort of wanna stock these fish because that’s sort of like their homing device. That’s when they imprint to the rivers and hopefully the rivers that we stock, those fish come back. So when we put ’em in the river systems, they’re already 1-year-old. So when they come back to where they usually around 19 to 21 inches first year or something like that. Yep, Tom (33m 32s): Yep, yep. Jeff (33m 33s): So, you know, they get about that. And then what, 5-year-old, like a 5-year-old manistee, you usually I’d say is close to 30 inches, right? Tom (33m 42s): Yeah. Easy 30 or over 30. That’s really a trophy in Ohio. Yeah. 30 inch and above fish, that’s a trophy. Jeff (33m 47s): I think it’s a trophy anywhere. British Columbia, Alaska, 30 inch fish, regardless of what it is, that’s a, that’s a heck of a fish to be swimming around in a little, these little runoff rivers that run into Lake Erie, Michigan on an average, you know, coming into Lake Michigan stuff there average is probably a little bit larger than ours. Overall, I think that’s declined a little bit, but they have a potential to get a 20 pounder, like, like Ontario fish too. But we’ve only seen a few of those in Ohio. But, so now Tom was talking about this, this potpourri of a mixture of spring and fall diverse fish. And I I agree 100% these fish from Wisconsin adapted quickly. We had a really, we’re still catching a few of them and I think it just made a great diversity of fish. Jeff (34m 34s): And maybe Tommy tell us experiences, like what, what did you, what made that program that diversity, what made it so special for us in the last four or five years? Tom (34m 42s): Just the returns of just big fish. I think that’s what everyone was really impressed with, that, you know, these are just such hard fighting fish, you know, they come in outta the lake and they just, you get ’em on your line and look out, they’re going to make four or five jumps, they’re gonna tail walk and you know, you really gotta be on your game to be able to land some of these fish. And they were just the Wisconsin in the, in the, in the Michigan, the little manisty fish there, just like hard fighters and, and they’re true steelhead. They have that genetics that make them, you know, want to come back and, and spawn in the rivers as opposed to a, a domestic rainbow. But they’re just a, an excellent quality of steelhead. Jeff (35m 23s): Yeah, I agree. The Dave from wet fly swing came up and we had a couple years where we posted a trip and Dave came in and he was pretty impressed about the fishery and he happened to hit that potpourri fish, but I do believe those fish came to a swung fly better, even better than the manes. ’cause the manatees have a tendency to like jump gravel really fast and they get in the boom boom room and they, they just get a little hard to get on the swung fly once in a while till they get done spawning again. But the Wisconsin fish, they seem to be, seem to be getting on it. And I, and then we talked to their, you know, the outfitters and everybody and they, they tend to agree with it. So we had that. Let’s see, according to the paperwork we got here, Tom, it looks about five years of that potpourri, didn’t we? Jeff (36m 5s): Yes, Tom (36m 6s): We did. And that really, like I said, that created a great fishery then in 2021 with COVID. Not that this is really a bad thing, but Right. The, the weirs in both Michigan and Wisconsin were, were closed. So the Division of Wildlife went to a backup plan, were able to go to the US Fish and Wildlife Commission, they were able to get Shasta, which are Shasta and Fish Lake domestic rainbows. And they were able to stock almost 500,000 of those in, in 2021. And since then, I guess we’ve had a combination of Michigan and Wisconsin fish for the last five years. Tom (36m 51s): And, and the fishery has still been very good. I mean, the majority, about two thirds is, is the, the, the wild manes as well as the Wisconsin strain. And about a third has been the, the shastas. And I guess there’s some, some studies going on right now to determine the, the return rate on the, on the shastas to see if they’re gonna return in, in, in good numbers. But our, our preference, and I guess what our club has advocated for is, is to get back to the, a mixture of the little manisty fish and the, the, and the Chambers Creek and Roca strain of steelhead. Tom (37m 31s): And we, we really would like those three and the shastas are probably okay rather than missing a, a year class of fish. But, but there’s the, the word is still out. I know the Bowling Green is doing a study right now for two years this year and next year where if people are harvesting a steelhead, they, they’re asking for the head and then they, they’re studying the olif bone, which is the ear bone and they’re able to determine, you know, the origin of the fish and a lot of the details of it. So they’re trying to study the, you know, the return rates of the little manistee, the Wisconsin fish as, as well as the, the Shasta and, and try to have some, some facts to back up, I guess what what what we all know is that the, the wild fish, the, the actual steelhead do return better. Jeff (38m 16s): Sometimes they need it on paper, right, Tom? Tom (38m 18s): Exactly. We need some data and charge to support that. Jeff (38m 22s): But there’s the fudge factor in there too. Yeah, Tom (38m 26s): And you know, one of the things too though is a lot of people say they know how to tell the difference between them, but honestly I don’t, I mean I, I look at it one, I say I think that’s a man Steve, but you know, you really have to take a, a skin, a scale sample and, and have it tested to really, really know for sure, Jeff (38m 41s): Yeah, everybody says, oh that’s amania, that’s this and that. I was like, the only way you could really tell is when you had 20 years of stocking manistee, it was pretty obvious what they were. But when you start throwing in the mixed bag and PAs fish and everything else, I think you can’t tell ’em like you said Tom. And Tom (38m 59s): That’s a good point too. I know in Ohio we get a lot of strays from, from Pennsylvania to help supplement our, our fish. And I’m sure some of our fish stray over to Pennsylvania and New York as well Dave (39m 9s): When it comes to premium flies that deliver results. Drift hook.com is the name to trust this season. Whether you’re chasing trout with dryly, swinging streamers, or dialing in those euro nmps, they’ve got everything you need. Here’s a quick story. I was fishing a tricky Spring Creek earlier this year and nothing was working then. I pulled out a royal wolf from the drift hook box. I cast upstream letting it drift effortlessly toward a holding fish. It was textbook one of the biggest fish in the run. 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Make your way to Yellowstone Teton territory and embark on a journey to one of North America’s finest fly fishing destinations. Dave (40m 35s): Whether you’re planning your trip now or just dreaming it up, the YTT is where those dreams turn into reality. Remember Yellowstone Teton territory, that’s Teton, T-E-T-O-N. It’s time to experience eastern Idaho for yourself and support this podcast at the same time. Jeff (40m 54s): So where does that bring us to, like, the most important part we have to start thinking about as an angler when we do this is that because these fish are only in the systems and within our grasp for about four to five years since COVID now we’re getting to that. So what, what’s, what do we got going on in the program now? Tom (41m 11s): Well, right now in Castella they have about 450,000 fish. They’re raising 250,000 are from Wisconsin, actually 10,000 are from Pennsylvania. They, they’re doing a little experiment to see if gathering some of the eggs from Pennsylvania, if that’s a good egg source I guess. And there’s also 190,000 Shasta domestic rainbows in there. So, so roughly 60% will be steelhead strain and, and about 40% will be domestic rainbows. It’ll be stocked this spring. And the goal this spring is, is to really get all manisty and Wisconsin eggs for the program. Jeff (41m 49s): Yeah, that’d be great. I mean, we can only, you know, hope we had a lobby when we were very beginning, like you said, Tom, we’re down here in Columbus just to get this London from London, Ohio strain. We lobbied down in Columbus and we, we, we, we tried to be a squeaky wheel and that worked, but their hands are sort of tarred with tied with the divisions of like, they can only supply so many eggs. And just to go on record, there’s a lot of people are trying to think that why doesn’t Ohio just get our own, like our own like hatchery and our own little weird that we can wear ’em on. But it’s a little more complicated than that to be self-sustaining, isn’t it? Tom (42m 24s): Yes, it is. I mean there has been a lot of discussion about getting aware in Ohio, but you’d have to close down a, a section of one of our rivers or a tributary for a period in the springtime to collect the eggs and, and, and that, and that may be an answer in the future. But, but for right now, actually, my, my preference is really to get the little manistee is a great strain as well as the Wisconsin fish. So as long as we’re able to get eggs from them, that, that, I think that’s really a, a great fish and and it really improves the genetics of, I think the steelhead in Lake Erie. I mean it’s, you’re bringing these wild steelhead in and you know, like, like they’re, they’re gonna, they’re gonna spawn with this, the other fish there, here and it’s gonna I think, improve their genetics. Jeff (43m 7s): Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we could, we could, this podcast alone, we could just talk about this because you know, most of the Canadian fish that are going up into the Canadian waters are wild or self-sustaining ’cause they don’t stock that many there. So we got a pretty diverse fishery all over the Great Lakes. And so let’s, let’s take a little look now we’ve got the stocking program. We’ll talk a little bit about how to approach spring fish and fall fish when you have different weathers later on. But let’s just see, you know, what about the, the, the latest stocking in 2024? Pretty big event when we stock the river, that burned a couple of times, right? Tom (43m 45s): Oh yeah. The Cuyahoga River, right? That, that’s a real success story. I think, you know, and probably most everybody listening knows, but what was it that was back in the sixties that the Cuyahoga River burned and really got a lot, it actually burned many times back then. Just that once at one time it burned, it burned really, really bad and got national news and that was really what started the Clean Water Act and the Cuyahoga River, you know, was the poster child for being a polluted river. And what would that be? 50 years probably of a lot of work has cleaned that river up to the point where now it can support a run of steelhead. Tom (44m 26s): And it did have, you know, some stray steelhead that would run up in there. But starting last spring we, we stocked it or the state of Ohio stocked it with 65,000 steelhead and plan to stock it each spring from this point forward. And you know, the fish, it, it opens up a whole lot. And we talked about access, being able to fish the Cuyahoga opens up, I think it was like 35, 36 miles of, of additional public access through the national park as well as the Cleveland and Summit County Metro Parks also have a lot of public access there. So it’s, it’s really, and, and the Cuyahoga is really a very beautiful river and there’s a lot of great fishing opportunities there. Tom (45m 9s): And it also opens up fishing for the people down more in the city. So the, the mouth of the Cuyahoga is right in the middle of downtown Cleveland and there’s a lot of people down there that really maybe can’t afford waiters or can’t, don’t have a boat to go out. So they’re able to, you know, fish, fish from, from the piers and, and the rocks and you were able to catch steelhead. Jeff (45m 29s): Yeah, it’s, it’s, I think it’s gonna offer a challenge for the walking weight angler. It’ll offer more opportunities for somebody that wants to float and get away. But there’s something to say about, yes, could you go down to a, you know, your local river and catch a, you know, catch a few fish, but you’re, you know, you’re gonna have a pretty good community with you. But there’s something to say about when you get to a bridge and you get away from the bridge and you start fishing the river with an opportunity to catch one of these fish and you look upstream and downstream most of the day and you don’t see another angler. I I think there’s the Cuyahoga is gonna bring that asset back that we haven’t had for a while in our area. ’cause the fisher, you know, the fishery’s so popular now, right? Jeff (46m 10s): Oh Tom (46m 10s): Yeah, yeah. That’s solitude of being able to get away and just, you know, chill out and enjoy the day. The nature, you know, you see eagles flying by and all kinds of other types of birds, docks, geese, deer, who knows what else will become running otters. All kinds of things running by you. Jeff (46m 27s): Yeah, man, it’s, it’s gonna be, I’m excited to dive into all this. I’m excited for everybody who’s gonna try. We’re gonna, the od NR sort of went against the national park, didn’t want these fish stocked and the od NR stuck a took a hard stand and thanks to Scott Hale and Kurt Wagner, they said, Nope, we’re putting him in. Hopefully we can keep it going. ’cause I think it takes, you know, one year doesn’t make it a successful fishery, but you know, we give it two or three years of, of stocking the river and we find out that it’s not being utilized, then we can make adjustments. But we, it’s, it’s a good, it’ll be a good test platform, don’t you think? Yep, Tom (47m 2s): Yep. Exactly. Jeff (47m 3s): Yeah, I mean, just like anything else, like you bring out a product, it’s like, it takes a little while for people to realize it and figure out how to get in there and everything else. Let’s talk a little bit about, you know, we can’t talk Michigan and New York or her lot, but let’s talk someone’s a little closer to home, which is the p then the PA stocking that, and you’re highly involved with the PA steelheaders with the presidents and the Chris over there. Why don’t you fill us in what they got going on over there. They got a a little hiccup in their program too, don’t they? Tom (47m 31s): Yes, they do. And OCBS does work with the PA Steelhead Association, which is a, a very similar organization. It’s based out of Pennsylvania and we try to work together on different things. But they had an issue with V-H-S-A-V-H-S scare two years ago, and they had the US Department of Agriculture as well as the PA Department of Agriculture came in and looked at what they were doing and said they really should not be taking eggs from the Lake Erie or Great Lakes Basin out of it. So they were taking some of their, they were raising half of their fish at their Ty Nesta hatchery and half of it at the Fair Fairview Hatchery, which is right on the lake. Tom (48m 13s): And, and it was a risk of when you take eggs, I guess the Great Lakes are considered a disease, the VHS disease waterway. And if you’re taken outta there to the Ty Nesta hatchery, you could risk, you know, spreading that to, to other waterways. So they had to stop raising or using their, the eggs that they take out of trout run at Ty Nesta. So what that does is that reduces their capacity from about 1.1 million steelhead to about 500,000 steelhead. Wow. Jeff (48m 41s): It’s Tom (48m 41s): Half. Yep. Yep. So last year they started to see that, I think they put in 800,000 instead of 1.1 this spring they’ll be putting in about 500,000 and they have a plan to correct that. The primary plan is to build a new hatchery in Fairfield Fairview, I should say, that will raise about 1 million plus fish a year. Nice. And the last I heard they were in the process of getting the money, I think it’s about $25 million approved and, and they were working on trying to find enough cold water to support the hatchery there, which they have found that. Tom (49m 21s): So, you know, they’re, they’re probably, you know, another, you know, four or five years away from having the new hatchers. What it sounds like one of the other options that, that they’re looking at too is they’re studying the shastas similar to what Ohio is stalking and seeing if they could get the Shasta from the US Fish and Wildlife and, and be able to raise those at t Nesta. One of the things that they’re doing this year though too is because of they couldn’t raise steelhead at at t Nesta. They, they’re, they’re gonna put in some bonus brown trout, so they were gonna stock, it was like 300,000 brown trout. Yeah, Jeff (49m 56s): That’s what I heard, Tom (49m 57s): Heard to make up for that. Jeff (49m 58s): So everybody’s sort of like, that’s the whole, like everybody in Ohio PA is like brown trout, brown trout, trout trout, brown trout. Right. But, so that could be exciting. Yeah, Tom (50m 7s): I think brown trout are real pretty fish. I love to catch them too, but, but my honest opinion is I like steelhead better. Jeff (50m 13s): Yeah, they say, they say that the brown trout do not return as well and don’t adapt to Lake Geer as much as that we thought they would. It just, all the gobies and bait fish, you figure this deep water off of Erie pa that thought they would just thrive. But even PA says that they’re not as, I dunno why we’re be the not a healthy system, but they just don’t get their bang for their buck. Yeah. Tom (50m 34s): And that’s what Ohio did. I know back in the, I think the early nineties they, they experimented a little bit with brown trout and decided that that wasn’t a good return either for their money. Jeff (50m 46s): Yeah, you think New York has got a bo you know, they got it going on, but it, you know, they really have a big program. But, so that, you know, that brings us sort of up to date where we’re at with the program. We’re sort of just glazing over it. You know, feel free to reach out to Dave and myself and even Tom at the Wild Central Basin Steelheaders, if you have any questions. And we can direct you to get all this information that we gather and stuff. But Tom, let’s talk a little bit about, we had two years of unseasonably mild winters and then this year, 2025, we’ve had a typical, typical weather pattern of winter. And let’s talk a little bit about fall fish, winter fish and how it affects your expectations of the fish. Jeff (51m 32s): You’re gonna try to catch, elaborate a little bit on that. Yeah, Tom (51m 36s): And you know, the last year, the fall, we, I think we had one of the driest falls we, we’ve had in near, near term memory and you know, most of our rivers were too low and clear to really support the fish coming back. And I know most of last spring I was actually fishing in the, the Bule harbor and my kayak or the lower grand, which is our largest river that hadn’t had some flow you’d be able to get, you know, some fish coming in there. But, but really the whole fall up until after Thanksgiving was really, the fishing was, you know, because of the environmental, you know, not, not getting the rain. And it was rather warm too. We didn’t really have that much of a, a round of fish. So starting in December we really started to have a lot of fish coming in. Tom (52m 20s): The runs were pretty good. And then we had a hard freeze, which we haven’t been used to lately. Yes. Yeah, I think I, new Year’s, new Year’s Day, I think I had a very good day fishing on the ash dela. And then basically things froze up from most of the month of January and February. I guess if you are a real diehard, you could go out and maybe catch one by standing at the edge of the ice, the shelf ice or something. But really that shut down fishing until really just ice hunt was about a week ago. Jeff (52m 50s): Yeah. So this is where some of the, the anglers that have been involved, like yourself and myself and the club members compared to somebody who’s just starting out now, you see ’em running around in April, you know, they’re, they’re looking in the shallows looking for the fish to, you know, on the gravel spawning in the boom boom room and you know, do the flossing thing. But that fishery, you have to have spring spawners to come in in spring. And if we, if as Tom and I went over, as you do the research, is that we predominantly have been stocking a little more the Shasta fish or any rainbows are a fall spawner. Then we have the Wisconsin fish, which are winter spawners. So we, and we’ve had some little manistee stock, but this is the reason why Mother nature, of course, too, will have influence with the rain flows. Jeff (53m 38s): Like Tom says, you have an influence of like the last two years, April fishing has been pretty non-existent in this our area because of the lack of spring. So that’s why I was like, what’s happening to the fish? Well, you basically just have to adapt to what those fish are. So the, if you have to fish in some crummy weather conditions through the slush in the winter, but we were blessed that we had some mild winters that we were able to really catch a bunch of nice fish, but they’re pretty much done by April. So now I saw that we did get a good push of little manistee in 2024, so that over 300,000 of those, I think that’s gonna, I think just by us, that shotgun approach, whatever we can get, it actually will keep just enough spring fish for us to get catching the fish, don’t you think? Jeff (54m 26s): Yeah. Tom (54m 26s): Yeah. And you know, I think the last couple years too, with a very mild winter, you know, those fish were spawning almost all winter. I mean, we never really had, you know, that that, I mean, I don’t think the fish really care. I think once the water temperatures warm up to over 40 degrees and the conditions are right, they’re gonna spawn whether it’s April or or February. So I think the last couple years we didn’t have a lot of fish in, in the spring, late spring because they all had spawned in January and February. Whereas this year, I think where we have a lot more fish coming in in the spring. ’cause you know, I think most of ’em are still out in the lake waiting to come in. Yeah. Jeff (55m 1s): Let’s, we had this conversation before we started the episode is that, so the interesting thing now is that we predominantly have had fall and winter spawn fish stocked, but they weren’t able to get in with low wall, low water and with a really severe winter. There is a thing that happens when a steelhead can’t get into its natal river because of unforeseen conditions and it can’t find another adjacent river to go up to spawn. They can actually reabsorb their eggs and they, a steelhead does not have to spawn every year. So we’re in this holding pattern, holding our breath, the fishing now we’re getting a few fresh fish in now where we’re, we’re still catching the ones that have came in and over over the winter, but the fish is still a little slow. Jeff (55m 50s): And we’re wondering if these fall fish can genetically adapt and say we’re coming in now and spawning in the springtime comparatively speaking, or are they gonna go back out and just stay in the lake and not come in? So the consensus is still out. Tom, I think that’s gonna be you, you and I are gonna find out everybody else, right? Yep. Tom (56m 8s): Hopefully, hopefully they’re still coming in. Yeah, Jeff (56m 10s): We, you know, Tom educated me a little bit. We did a little research like if you ever, we don’t bunk many steelhead and keep ’em, but some of the boat anglers that catch these fish out in the boat early season in May and that they’re have egg sacks and melt in them, but there’s a black residue that’s up on the top of their body cave that is eggs that were reabsorbed into their system and we will be interested to see what happens here. Yeah. I Tom (56m 39s): I never realized years before that they did reabsorb their eggs. I I always thought that they just spawn no matter what. But but I was surprised to learn that they, that some of them just don’t spawn and reabsorb the eggs back, back into them. Yep. Jeff (56m 51s): I think mother nature just protects itself Yep. One way or another. Yep. The ones that squeak in when there’s no water on their up, upside down, squeaking through two inches of water and the other ones are saying, not for me, I’m going out to the lake and go get fat again. Tom (57m 2s): Yeah. And I think some of them might spawn in the, like in the harbors too, in some of the, some of those areas. But Jeff (57m 8s): Yeah, I would expect especially like, you know, the lake trout and the brown chop for sure. And I, and even like the Mount of the creek, right? You could get a mount of the creeks that come in as long as there’s a little flow and you got the right com, you know, the composition of the bottom, they can definitely spawn there for sure. Yep. But, well, I think let’s, let’s move on. We got a little bit of time left. Let’s talk a little bit about a fishing tip. Like, so we talked about all sorts of things, but let’s give them a little nugget. How, what would be a really good tip? Like when you’re going, you’re, I mean, you catch a lot of fish, what would be a good tip for a beginning angler to sort of like focus on first? Tom (57m 47s): I, I guess it depends on the style of fishing, but let’s just say you’re, I I really think the easiest way to catch a steelhead is usually with a jig under a, under a under a float. You know, that that’s, a lot of times I’ll, I’ll tell people you don’t have to worry about, you know, the getting that right drift or anything, but getting just a, a jig. I, I know I like voodoo jigs, but there’s all kinds of jigs. A lot of people tie their own jigs, but just suspending a jig, like a one 32nd ounce, like a black marabou jig under a float about three foot under a float and j just work it around a pole or, or through, through the runs. I think sometimes that’s the easiest way really to, to, to catch your first steelhead. Tom (58m 29s): Yeah. Jeff (58m 30s): Yeah. I mean it is pretty important to get, you would say like a specialty steelhead jig that has a little better hook, right? Yeah. Tom (58m 36s): Oh yeah. You gotta have a, a strong hook for sure. Yeah. And that’s one of the things with voodoos, they have a very, very strong hook. I’ve never seen any of them straighten out. Jeff (58m 45s): Yeah. I mean the crappy jig would work, but it might not work out real well in the, in the long run. Yep, yep, Tom (58m 51s): Yep. And you know, for fly fishing, you know, using, use a, you know, a 10 foot seven weight and you know, u usually a good setup is to have a, like a bead head nymph along with the, with an egg fly. A lot of, a lot of people and, you know, Ohio use, use the, the double double rig set up and there’s a lot of books written about it. I know John Nay has a book that goes into great detail as, as well as Carl Wexman has a, has a new book out on that. But, you know, just, just being able to, you know, drift that, that egg pattern with that beheaded nymph, you want the bead headed nymph to be able to get the, get your offering down to the bottom where the fish are. Usually the steelheads gonna be in the bottom of the whatever you’re fishing, usually in the bottom, you know, one foot of water. Tom (59m 36s): So you wanna get your, your offering down there to them and you wanna have a natural drift. You wanna make sure it’s flowing at the same speed. Your, your drift, your your bait is, or your fly is drifting at the same speed as, as the water is down there. It’ll look natural or, or a little slower sometimes. Jeff (59m 50s): Yeah. I think a lot of anglers, and this goes for fly with an indicator or center pin or a spinning rod, is that they don’t use enough weight, do they, Tom? Yep. Tom (59m 60s): Nope. A lot of times the, the flies and or bait are going right over the steelheads head and when the warmer water, you know, they’ll move more maybe to take something, but when it’s colder, when it’s, you know, in the thirties and forties, you know, they don’t, they don’t move quite as far to take something. So you really wanna put that offering right in front of their face. Jeff (1h 0m 18s): Yeah. Last time you and you fished, I noticed that you actually don’t use a lot of split shots. You actually use like a torpedo weight system to, to balance your float and then you add smaller shot closer to that. Can you maybe, maybe elaborate a little bit why you’re loading the float that way? What makes it effective and Tom (1h 0m 36s): Yeah. That, that’s when I, when I’m center pin fishing, a lot of people will use a button down shot pattern, but it, it takes a lot of time and effort to be putting all those split shot on. So basically it’s a, it’s about a one eighth ounce it line sinker that I use. And that’s kind of like bulk, that’s like bulk shoting it so that you’re, you’re getting that bait right down, right down to the bottom where the fish are. And then I, I’ll go with about a 20, 20 inch liter, usually fluorocarbon about six pounds. I might put about one BB on there and depending on, you know, the, the size of the river and you know, I’ll, I’ll go with maybe a six six or an eight gram float and I’ll add a couple pieces of split shot like right below the float kind of to balance it out. Jeff (1h 1m 28s): Oh, okay. And that just gets that bait right down, right away. We wanna Tom (1h 1m 31s): Get it right down to the bottom. Yeah. Jeff (1h 1m 32s): Right Tom (1h 1m 33s): Away. I actually learned that trick there from Brian Kelly who’s one of the top steelhead fishermen in this area. Yeah. Jeff (1h 1m 40s): He just texted me now he’s fishing and we’re talking, which is Tom (1h 1m 43s): Good. The, Jeff (1h 1m 45s): So monofilament or braid from the, from the real to that float into your inline sinker mono monofilament or braid? No, Tom (1h 1m 54s): I always use mono. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Braid doesn’t have stretch to it and you really want to have stretch when you’re fighting these fish and, and, and the braid does tend to freeze up when it gets colder. It doesn’t, doesn’t fish as well in the cold weather. So I, I just go with, with mono. Jeff (1h 2m 10s): Okay, great. And you mentioned that, you mentioned the jig to start out with, you wouldn’t, would you use the jig with the inline sinker or is that something you wouldn’t Tom (1h 2m 19s): No, usually if I’m fishing the jig, I will, I’ll take that inline sinker off and I’ll just run the jig under the float and maybe balance the float with a couple split shot underneath. Okay. Underneath the float. Jeff (1h 2m 30s): Okay. But you Tom (1h 2m 31s): Really want that. I’ll tell you what I, what, what’s the best way I I like to do it is I, I like to put a slip float on. Oh. And, and that way I set the, the, the, the float stoppers. So there’s about maybe a, a foot of play. Okay. So that you kind of give it a little twitch and that gives that jig a little up and down action while it, while it’s, while you’re drifting it. And that’s Jeff (1h 2m 52s): A good Tom (1h 2m 52s): Tip. A lot of times that little twitching, that little movement will get the steelhead to strike. Jeff (1h 2m 57s): Yeah. Especially in those really slow tanky winter pools when the water’s cold, huh. Tom (1h 3m 0s): Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And you know, I’ve seen, you know, where, you know, you’ll have a pack of, or a school of steelhead sitting there and it’s pretty clear water and nobody seems like they want to hit it and you kind of twitch it a couple times and then one of those steelhead, for whatever reason for that pack just comes out and just bangs it, Jeff (1h 3m 17s): Change the speed, change the direction, you get the bully of the Tom (1h 3m 19s): Pack. Right. Kamikaze. Yeah. Jeff (1h 3m 23s): You know, well that’s, those are great tips. I really, that one with the slip float that’s like inside intel from an ly like yourself who spends countless hours on the river, now you’re retired from your full-time job, you’re running the club. I can’t thank you enough for that, but I’m gonna leave a little story that me and you had, and this is over 20 years, right? I’m sure it was Tom, right? Yeah. Thinking so there’s always a little fishing story. And just to go on record, I’ve been to a lot of places and I’m sure Tom has two and we’ve been to Michigan together, but you could catch as many fish as you want. But the story that always sticks in your mind has nothing to do with the fish catching. It’s always about what happens and that, well we were on Elk Creek a long time, time ago and we’re running around with our chickens with the head cut up ’cause we wanna catch as many fishes we can. Jeff (1h 4m 10s): It’s pouring down rain. And I have my Patagonia raincoat on and Tom was smart enough to take his off and he throws it in the back of the truck and we jump outta the truck. And I wasn’t even thinking, I’m already wearing my raincoat and I took your raincoat ’cause it’s a little bigger, put it on top of mine and then you go, where’s, where’s my raincoat? And then we’re swearing, we’re cussing, we’re thinking where we are. And then you looked at me and you’re like, Jeff, you have two raincoats on. Tom (1h 4m 39s): That was, that was funny Jeff. I was, remember like, Jeff (1h 4m 43s): I was so like in the zone, I didn’t, I was like, only thing I could think about was like catching like fish bri catch another steelhead. But that was a pretty good time. Tom, I, yeah, I can’t thank you enough for coming on. Could you maybe tell the listeners where they could get ahold of you and the club and how to, how to go about being a member, whatever, anybody? Tom (1h 5m 1s): Yeah, we have a website. It is. You could go to www Ohio steelheaders.com and if you have any questions for me or, or anything about the club or fishing in general, we do have a a contact me tab there that, that email goes directly to me. We do have a membership tab there on the website too that, you know, you can join, you know, and pay for your membership with a, with PayPal there, right online or you know, everyone’s always welcome in our meetings. You don’t have to be a member to attend. We do have a, on our website, we have a scheduled meeting, so if you’re interested in the club, just show up and, and see if you like it. Tom (1h 5m 43s): Like I said, we earlier, we, we all our meetings, we do have, you know, a very good speaker. Someone’s gonna be, you know, hopefully providing some information to make you a better angler as well as there’s a lot of camaraderie at the meetings, you know, a lot of networking, you know, you could talk to other people and see what they’re doing, where they’re fishing, you know, everyone’s usually pretty, pretty open. And our next meeting actually is gonna be on Thursday, March the 27th. That’s a west side meeting, which will be at the Emerald Necklace Marina. We’re gonna have Roger Hinchcliffe who’s the Steelhead Manifesto. He’s a lamb mcass pro. In fact actually he’s now I think vice president of Lamb Mcass. Tom (1h 6m 26s): He’s based outta Michigan now. He’s gonna talk about spring float fishing for drop back steelhead. So that’s appropriate for that. And then we have our last meeting of this season, which is gonna be April the 17th. That’ll be an east side meeting at the firehouse. And we’re gonna have John Brohu, who’s the Orvis Westlake manager, he’s also a fly fishing instructor and he’s gonna talk about spring small mouth bass on the fly. And, and I know we’re a steelhead club, but we have a program about small mouth, but typically most of our members will transition from steelhead into small mouth in the spring, usually starting around April, may. Tom (1h 7m 7s): And we also have a very good round of Lake Ron small mouth in most of our rivers that we catch some, some monster smallies that are not as much fun as steelhead, but almost as much fun as steelhead. It’s a crossover Jeff (1h 7m 22s): Man. That’s a lot of great intel. I mean it’s a remote drinking location. All the speakers generally get a great, great, great, lots of information. Wanna thank all the listeners again for tuning in. Thank Tom again. And if you have any suggestions or you want to hear a certain podcast about something, reach out to Dave or myself and we would be more than happy to answer your questions, get a podcast you want. I’ve got a couple coming up, one of the Fishies dudes I know here, Phil Cook in Michigan. We’re gonna talk all about really getting into some fish brain stuff. And then I’ve got Eric Kki who’s gonna be the muskie star of Lake Sinclair. So that’s what’s coming up. Jeff (1h 8m 3s): Thanks for the listen and catch you on the what next one.