Bobber Fishing Steelhead - October 2021

So we got tip of the tail right here. This is going to be a rough estimate. That's how you spool your pole when you got to sleep out of your truck. I forgot that I have to tie bags tonight too because I left all my spawn at home. I was fishing this year and I was going down the river and somebody had planted a bunch of metal stakes all over the river bank and unfortunately that caused the drift boat I used to pop and because of that I don't know if you guys can see this patch right here. I patched it all back on and then I did a layer of Flex Seal over the top. There's a whole patch kit. You guys probably can't even see it that well because it's actually blending really nicely and I haven't really been able to be in commission for a lot of the fishing that I was usually able to do. We got to pump the raft up. We got to set a couple rods up and then I think we'll be ready to go. Man that's the perfect drift for that. The cleaning ladies are at the door. You need to let them in. They're at the door right now trying to get in. I'm fishing right now. Yeah I'm fishing all by myself right now because nobody wanted to go with me. Well see that's why I'm not going to say sorry because I don't want to be a liar. Wait that might be a fish. That's a fish. Steelhead. I got one. I got one. I got one. It's swimming right upstream at me. Holy crap. Oh no it's in the wood. Wow. First one of the day in the net. It's in the net. Just got the first one of the day. Taking an important business phone call. A nice little buck as you guys can see right there. This is definitely a true wild. It's not a misclipped. Nothing you can tell. It's got a true adipose fin on them. Super slimy. Super healthy. See the adipose right there. Definitely a wild fish. Keeping them soaking wet. You guys will see. Absolutely perfect fish. All right let's get him back. Back in the hole. It's really important that we get these fall fish back if we're not going to be keeping them. It's a nice solid male right there. Bloodied up from that spawn bag and uh second second fish of the day. It's a there. All right guys. Not a monster but it's a nice respectable adult steelhead. Right off the lake. Super chrome and tell you what man what a day. Gotta limit a fish. We're gonna send this guy off on his way. See if we can't get like one or two more. As you can see he's completely fine. Is that a king or a steelhead? I don't know. I'm gonna grab the net. It's help. It didn't look. I think it's a king. Wait a minute. It's a steelhead. Dude that thing fought like crazy. Dude let me go get my camera real quick. I wish I was recording my gopro but this is definitely a bonus fish. This is my biggest steelhead of the year by far. Gonna get a quick measurement on them and we're gonna let them go here. Keeping them in the water. Been trying to do better with that. So we got tip of the tail right here. This is gonna be a rough estimate. Oh it's well over 30 inches. Let's see. Looks like its nose is just past 30 and then we'll get a little girth on them real quick and then I'll get them on the way. Main girth 30 by 30 but by about 17 and a half. 30 by 17 and a half. Dude that's a freak. That's a great fish. Bye. Dude that was that was so epic dude. I wish I freaking got that hook up on my gopro. You got it on your gopro right? All right so since I know a lot of you guys are curious and I get comments on every single video I'm gonna go over my basic setup. Right here we have a 11 foot rod. It's a rx7 rain shadow custom wrapped by mags custom rods and we have that paired up with a 5 inch john milner kingfisher and I'm actually trying out some new line this year. I put some of the 20 pound chromium on it and I gotta say I actually really do like it. It was something I was a little bit skeptical of but it has a little bit thinner line diameter than some of the other line I was running and it actually has the equivalent line diameter of most 15 to 14 pound monofilaments. So right here starting up at the top we have a 10 gram float. This is actually a custom float made by brian lee smith. He is the owner of silverwolf custom floats. Really cool. I usually don't run a lot of custom floats unless I know the water very well because I tend to throw them in a lot of trees but got a piece of tubing right on top and then I like to put a piece of tubing directly underneath the ball saw. It seems to save the stem pretty well. These are custom floats are very high end so the stems aren't really an issue but in general I like to do that with my floats and I like to put a piece of tubing right on the end and then starting right here we have a tapered shot pattern with size seven split shot evenly spaced out. These are size seven and this is something new I've been adding to my setup. I just started doing this this year. I'm running 80 pound test vmc barrel swivels. I really don't think that you need to run any crazy micro swivels. This isn't like we're not throwing nymphs or anything crazy like that and if you look at it in comparison it's honestly smaller than the split shot that all of us usually run and I haven't had any issues. I'm still hooking the same amount of fish honestly. I really haven't noticed a difference especially with these small fish. It really shouldn't matter. So we got the top end right here and then leading into the leader I am running eight pound test. We have a double clinch knot right here with a I would say about 24 inch leader with two bb split shot. I really like using blood runs. Soft shot sticks to the line really well and you can move it around on your leader without fraying the line. Has pretty low abrasion. Right after that we have a raven specimen wide gape hook. Love running these hooks. I like running size sixes and I like running size fours. I'll usually pull off a size four in the fall. They're usually more aggressive fish. You don't have to be as tactical with these fish. They're not really super finesse especially when the water temperatures are cooperating. Yeah that's our setup right here just a simple 10 gram float, four tapered split shot that are size seven, 80 pound barrel swivel, eight pound test, two bb split shot, size six hook with the snell knot and I'm tipping it off with a spawn bag. Most of the fish caught in this video were caught using Potski's premium trout Atlas Mike spawn netting and magic thread. I usually like to make my spawn sacks anywhere between a dime size and a quarter size. All you have to do is place it right in the center of the netting. Grab all four corners and what you're going to do is you're going to twist it until it's just snug. You don't want to make it too tight and you don't want to make it too loose but you really want to make sure you have a spherical profile. That's very important when fishing for steelhead. They really key in on just circular spherical shapes and it's really nice because the magic thread you just wrap it around a couple times pull on it should break on its own and you cut it with scissors and you're left with a nice perfect spawn sack.