I'll be honest here, I can't believe guys get caught up in little things. gear fishing for steelhead seems to have changed a lot since I did much of it (the 80's). It seems that run timings are much much smaller and decent fisheries are few and far between.
I remember having it not be uncommon to catch several fish a day. The rivers here in southwest washington, other than the Kalama and the cowlitz basically suck!

My biggest piece of advise is fish rivers that don't suck!