Fly Fishing

troutfly247 · Location: Colorado Springs, CO

Growing up in Washington State I’m quite familiar with ocean run steelhead and the tremendous myth behind them. After moving to Michigan, I was somewhat curious about the lake run fish with the same name. But, after finally finding my home in Colorado, I’m more confused than ever. We have reservoir run rainbows that are not resident fish. Each spring these fish migrate into the river and go through the spawning cycle. Now I know these fish do not have the fight and pure rage like the ocean run fish do, but fish up to 16lbs have been caught in this river. So, my question is, what makes a steelhead a steelhead? Genetic strain? I’ve hooked into some that fight just like a steelhead, they look like a steelhead, but we call them rainbows? Granted there is a difference between the migratory salt water steelhead, but what about the lake run fish from Michigan?

TroutBone · Location: Bavaria, Germany

The Steelhead are the rainbows that runs into the ocean and migrate back to their original stream to spawn, and there are resident rainbows that don`t migrate at all due to being landlock or from dam buildups throughout time in histories or as well as droughts low level water, these fish get trap along with Steelhead that haved migrated back, it is belief that these steelhead then gets adapted to being a landlocked fish and due to their sized and their genetic traits being anadromous form that they become adapt to their new lifestyle, they can reproduce with rainbows and these strains is what you may be encountering or confused about about, Rainbow that can find their way to the oceans are the same if food becomes scares or there is a path of freeway to escape from poor water source or scarce of food.
These fish will tend to migrate to the ocen if possible, it is also believed that if there is an abundant of food then there is that chance that these fish might not even migrate at all, and it is common to have both steelhead and rainbow inhabiting the same streams, and it is also possible to have rainbow that don`t migrate into the ocean and steelhead to spawn in the same streams as well as their offsprings being either or, and what I`m believing is that in washington you have the pure strains of steelheads and both Michigan and Colorado you are running into the landlock strains and the strains that have produce offsprings from both parents, hope this helps out on the confusion a little bit.

Joe_M · Location: Boston

There are lots of different varieties of trout even within a species. So for rainbows you have strains that spend their entire life in a particular stream or river, you have some fish that spend essentially their entire life in lakes only spawning in streams or stream mouths, and you have steelhead that are predisposed to migrate top the ocean and return to the river to spawn (there are other varieties but lets keep things simple). The majority of the Great Lakes Steelhead are called steelhead becuase their origins were Skamania steelhead stock, but these fish obviously don't migrate to the ocean instead they migrate to the lakes. For Reservoir Run Rainbows, you are probably fishing for rainbows that have traditionally never migrated to the ocean but are now, behaving like steelhead by migrating to the reservoirs or lakes and then spawning in the rivers. They are all just rainbows with different life cycles.