4 Tools to Catch More Bigwater Steelhead

Ross Robertson Oct 15, 2024

Large bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes, have fairly large populations of mostly stocked steelhead. Unlike their cousins found in western rivers, they tend to be much less picky, and getting a lure in front of them is often the most difficult part of the equation. While steelhead in rivers are often found in water shallow enough to wade, large bodies of water tend to find steelhead suspended in deep water, which calls for different techniques.

Here are four tools to consider using to increase your open-water steelhead success.

Fish Hawk Steelhead on the Great Lakes and many other stocked waterways prefer a water temperature of less than 70 degrees. In some cases, this just means a migration to a shallower or deeper basin to find their ideal water temp and food source. Other times it gets a little more complicated. On large lakes winds and feeder tributaries move different layers of water which can have temperature differences as drastic as thirty degrees.

A Fish Hawk is a speed and temperature probe that can be put down on a downrigger or pole line to show your actual lure speed and temperature where your lures are at, as opposed to just at the surface from your sonar unit’s SOG and surface temperature. The probe will allow you to find the ideal water temperature pockets quickly and adjust to them as they move. It's as easy as bringing the probe up and down through the water column and reading the digital display.

The same could be said for lure speed. Currents on larger bodies of water cause your lures to not run at the speed or action that you think they are. If you have ever trolled in one direction on a flat lake and caught fish like crazy, only to turn around and go the opposite direction and not catch a thing, it is very likely that current played a role. It can change not only how the lures run but also the depth at which they run.

Downriggers If there was ever a tool to fish deep with ease, it would have to be a downrigger. A boom arm allows you to raise and lower a weight heavy enough to stay nearly vertical, even at trolling speeds. A release clip at or near the weight allows you to clip your line into it after letting the lure out a distance anywhere from a few feet to as much as a hundred. The heavy weight being vertical allows you to fish at a deep and precise depth very easily.

While you can run a plethora of fishing lures off of a downrigger for steelhead, an old-fashioned trolling spoon is still the go-to for the majority of anglers. Shallow stick baits, J Plugs, or even dodger and fly setups can play a role.

Like everything else in the world, downriggers can be as simple as a hand crank model, all the way up to electric models with digital displays that will follow the bottom depth for you. A downrigger is also the easiest place to attach your Fish Hawk probe in order to get accurate speed and temp readings.

Dipsy Diver A Dipsy Diver is a disc-shaped trolling device that has a release to allow it to dive deep but trip when a fish hits to make reeling in much easier. On the back of the Dipsy, it has numbers from zero to three. This allows the Dipsy to plane away from the boat and steer clear of your downrigger lines while also allowing you to run more lines and get lures further away from the boat. A zero setting is straight down, as you increase to a 1, 2, or 3 setting, the diver planes farther and farther away from the boat. With a little experience, it’s possible to run three per side with little issue.

Different size divers are available to reach the depth ranges you require. A plastic ring snaps onto the outside of the larger sizes, which can help you reach additional depth by creating a larger plaining surface when installed.

When trolling with a Dipsy, a line counter reel is recommended to keep track of the line out for depth control and being able to reproduce successful results. A beefier rod is required to handle the pull of a Dipsy, and a braided line helps you get deeper, trip the release easier, and get better hookups.

Much like a downrigger, trolling spoons or shallow diving lures can be trolled behind the Dipsy after adding a leader length anywhere from your rod’s length or even longer when fishing gin-clear water.

Leadcore Line Leadcore line is just that, a hollow Dacron or braid with a thin lead core. This setup allows the entire length of the line to act as a sinker. Unlike other diving devices or sinkers where the weight is at one point, leadcore line is distributed throughout so that speed or slack line doesn’t drastically change the diving depth.

When anglers talk about how many colors of lead they are using, they refer to the fact that every thirty feet, the color of the line sheath changes. This makes it easier to determine how much line you have out very quickly and without using a line counter.

At just over 2mph, most leadcores will dive at five feet per color. Some newer leadcore lines, such as Suffix 832, can achieve roughly seven feet per color because of the super line braid that it has as a sheath. Besides getting extra depth, the narrower overall diameter also allows you to use a much smaller spool reel and still accommodate the amount of line you may need.

Two main rigging setups can be found to rig leadcore. The first is to use a very large reel and fill it with a “core,” which consists of 10 colors or a full spool. Anglers will let this straight out the back of the boat, using enough line to achieve their target depth, reeling in or letting more out as needed.

The other method is “segmenting,” or putting a predetermined amount of leadcore on one reel with backing on each end of it. This requires way more reels but allows you to fish them on planerboards to get them away from the boat as well as fish more lines per side.

Splicing the line or attaching leaders is actually very easy. It is done by pushing roughly 6 inches of lead out of the sheath and breaking it off. Without the lead core, the sheath is very easy to knot. One of the most effective ways to attach a leader or splice two lines together is with a back-to-back uni knot.

The same type of lures you’d use on downriggers or Dipsy Diver’s can be used with leadcore, but you can also mix in deep diving baits to get a little bit of additional depth.

The difference in how you fish steelhead from rivers and small bodies of water compared to large lakes is drastic, but fishing big or deep water doesn’t have to be difficult. You will, however, need a little bit more or at least different equipment to be effective.