Trout · Oncorhynchus mykiss
Steelhead
Also called Sea-run rainbow, Chromer.
Short answer
A steelhead is a rainbow trout that migrates to the ocean or a large lake, grows there, and returns to its river to spawn. It is the same species as a rainbow, far larger, bright silver when fresh, and the hardest-fighting fish most trout anglers will ever hook.
How to identify a steelhead
- Chrome
- A fresh fish is silver-white with almost no visible stripe. Colour develops with time in the river.
- Spots
- Small black spots over the back and across the whole tail, as on any rainbow.
- Size and build
- Thicker through the shoulder than a resident fish, with a deeply forked tail.
- Fin wear
- Hatchery fish usually have a clipped adipose fin. Wild fish have an intact one, and the rules often turn on this.
What a steelhead is
Steelhead are not a separate species but a separate life strategy: some rainbow trout stay in their river all their lives and some run to salt water, grow fast on a far richer diet, and come back years later at six to twenty pounds. In the Great Lakes, introduced rainbows do exactly the same thing using the lake instead of the ocean, which is why Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, New York and Minnesota have steelhead fisheries. Fresh fish straight from the sea or the lake are brilliant chrome with a faint stripe; the longer they are in the river the more they colour up into something that looks like a very large rainbow.
- Native to
- Native to Pacific drainages from California to Alaska. Introduced and self-sustaining in the Great Lakes, where the lake takes the place of the ocean.
- Typical size
- Six to twelve pounds is typical. Great Lakes fish average six to ten; Pacific and British Columbia fish exceed twenty.
- What they eat
- In the ocean or lake, baitfish and crustaceans. In the river, adults feed little — they take flies out of aggression, territoriality or residual instinct rather than hunger, which is why egg patterns and swung flies work when nothing imitative does.
Where steelhead live
Pacific coast rivers from California to Alaska, the Columbia basin, the Olympic Peninsula and British Columbia. In the Great Lakes, the tributaries of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Fly fishing in Ohio Fly fishing in Oregon Fly fishing in Washington Fly fishing in Michigan Fly fishing in New York
Conservation status
Many wild Pacific populations are in serious decline and several are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Wild steelhead are release-only across much of the West, rivers close in-season by emergency rule, and Great Lakes fisheries are maintained by stocking.
Protected status and the rules that follow from it are set state by state and change. Before you fish, check the current regulations for the water you are standing in — this page is a starting point, not a legal reference.
How to catch steelhead
Two traditions. Swinging a fly on a two-handed rod across and down covers water and produces the grab everyone remembers; nymphing an egg or a stonefly under an indicator catches more fish. Neither is wrong. What matters more is water: steelhead hold in specific, repeatable places, and learning three good runs properly beats fishing ten badly. Expect long blank days as a normal outcome rather than a failure.
- An intact adipose fin means a wild fish, and usually means release. Learn to check.
- They are not feeding. Stop trying to match a hatch and start covering water.
- Blank days are normal. The people who catch them are the people who kept going.
Flies that work for steelhead
Each of these is a card in the deck, and each has a full page in Our Fly-brary.
Keep reading
- How to release a trout — handling, and why it matters more for some species than others
- How to read water — where each of these fish holds
- Hatches and what trout eat — the food these fish are feeding on
- Fly fishing by state — which species you will meet, state by state
Rainbow Trout Brown Trout Brook Trout Cutthroat Trout Bull Trout Lake Trout Golden Trout Arctic Grayling Dolly Varden Tiger Trout Mountain Whitefish