Another thing we used to use was our own homemade bobbers. WE would take a small cork test tube stopper. Dip it in paint and put polka dots on it. Similar to the old clown drifters. Fished them above the hook like a corky Biggest steelhead I ever landed, which is now a replica mount on my living room wall, was caught in 2001 on a cork stopper dipped in pink nail polish with dark red dots and gob of eggs on the hook. 24 lbs. on the Hump. Lost one a week later in the same drift that was bigger. I still have some of those cork bobbers.
The old stories are all we have now. Now we struggle to even have a steelhead season open to us recs on most rivers.