Surf Zone Steelheading: How To Catch Lake Erie Steelhead from the Shoreline

Fly fishing Great Lakes shorelines can give you an overdose of adrenaline, not only from the environments you can find yourself exposed to but also from the fish themselves. A steelhead hooked off the beach is a different animal, a different beast, one not confined to a tributary pool. If you don't know what color your backing is, you're going to find out rather quickly when a steelhead makes a beeline for Canada in a drag screaming run. Your line is running out to the right but the fish is leaping out of the water 20 yards to the left. It’s simply the best form of a steelhead within its life history that you can hook up on. Pure, unadulterated, chrome.

So how do you find them? Starting points are obviously tributary mouths that flow into the big lakes, but you don't have to be right at the mouth in order to catch them. Induced by the need to spawn, steelhead stage in deeper water near tributary mouths, waiting for optimal conditions before making a migratory run. These early fall fish often give themselves away by leaping or breaching the water's surface near the tributary mouth. Once lake water temperatures drop into the mid sixties, they seemingly sniff around, cruising shorelines looking for acclimation points.

Years ago, there used to be a big boulder on the west side of the mouth of 20 Mile Creek that I liked to get up on and bomb away. I had just moved back to Erie from New England where I had become enamoured with fly fishing for striped bass. I was immediately drawn to the surf zone of Lake Erie, down sized my tackle and fly selection, and started fishing for steelhead on the big water from shore.

It was late September and the fish were there. I kept getting follows with a white, marabou tailed Clouser Minnow but had no takers. After a while, I kept hearing this splashing over my right shoulder and turned around to look. There was an older gentleman standing on the shore and fighting a steelhead with a fly rod. 

Back then you never saw a guy with a fly rod on a Lake Erie beach, and we had introduced each other earlier that morning. His name was Ray Bouch. He came up to Lake Erie every early fall from North Carolina. I waded out and watched him land his fish. I mentioned that I was getting some follows but no hookups. He said, “Karl, if you can keep your feet on dry land and you are patient, they will come swimming right in front of you and you can sight cast ahead of them.” It was my first lesson I learned when fly fishing for surf zone steelhead. Thank you Ray, some of it I’ve had to learn on my own, but you were my early mentor. 

You read the beach shoreline on big water just as you would in a river or stream, and you'll want to scout these areas when the water is relatively calm and the sun is up before fishing them. Steelhead use what I call travel corridors once they enter nearshore waters. Some of these travel corridors are long, running parallel to the beach. Many of the bottom depressions along a Great Lakes shoreline are several feet deeper than the surrounding water and can be large and expansive, holding staging steelhead, sometimes in large, stationary schools. 

These depressions and troughs can be deciphered by the color of the water. I look for the darkest, greenest water that can be found near a tributary mouth. Large depressions look like great big bathtubs in the bottom of the lake. Travel corridor troughs can appear as dark ribbons with lighter colored water in front and behind them.

Wind direction can also tell you where to find these fish. It’s probably the biggest decisive factor in which to consider in order to find steelhead positions along the surf zone. Here on the south shore of Lake Erie we first look for south winds to predict finding fishable conditions, though other wind directions should not deter you because they are probably going to change anyway. 

One reason why wind direction is so important is because if the tributary has any outflow going into the lake, wind will push that current to the left or right of that mouth. On the south shore of Lake Erie we have prevailing westerly winds which will push that flow to the east of the tributary mouth. An easterly wind will push it to the west. So, a steelhead swimming around and looking for an acclimation point to enter that tributary will usually be found downwind of the mouth. This applies to any Great Lakes surfzone steelhead fishery.

While I’d certainly rather sight-cast to pods of steelhead moving up or down the beach, sometimes rough surf conditions should not deter you from giving it a shot. Rough conditions are normally associated with winds over 15mph, 2 to 3 foot breakers crashing the beach, and low pressure systems that involve precipitation events, which can be just what a steelhead needs to enter a tributary. 

I've also seen conditions where the big lake is dirty after a stormy precipitation event, yet the tributaries were still pumping clear water into the lake. One year I waded out in front of 4 Mile Creek and the first pool up from the lake was loaded with people and fish but nobody was on the beach. Lake Erie had a coffee with cream color but I kept following the relatively clear, high on the drop yet slightly stained colored outflow into the gently sloping beach front.

I immediately saw large steelhead cruising back and forth, in and out of dirty water. I put on a large #10 Chartreuse and Flame glow spawn egg pattern under a shallow set float and hooked up some very nice fish. Yes, egg patterns do work off the beach, and if I keep getting follows and refusals from fish that will normally pounce on a streamer an egg under a float can sometimes save the day. My other favorite egg pattern to use off the beach is a simple 3 loop Pink Lady egg pattern that when wet looks just like a glob of eggs. 

Before going on to other topics there is one more thing I’ve had to learn the hard way, and maybe even more than once. When fly fishing, never approach the beach near a tributary mouth without being ready to make an immediate cast. Have a fly ready and coils of line stripped from the reel so that when you approach the beach and you see fish, you can catch them, or at least get a shot off. There have been too many times in my life when I wasn't ready. This would most often happen in the middle of a bright sunny day after the beach had cleared of other anglers for lunch.