spotted a group of five steelies the other day holding about mid depth in about 8 feet of water. Threw a pink wowm on a 1/8oz jig head under a float. First cast a large buck took a run at it but never bit. I continued to drift it by them a dozen times with no response. They didnt even move. I then decided to try somthin with a little smaller profile. I put on a shrimp pink glow bug and gave it a cast about 15 yards above the fish. As soon as it got within 5 yards of them the spooked and took off out the tale out of the hole.

Its hard to believe a four inch pink piece of rubber didnt phase them and even inticed a charge, but a pea sized ball of yarn scares the hell out of em. Makes you wonder dosent it?

Rich did you float the GB or did you use drift gear? I've seen schools of hatchery fish avoid even a tiny slinky drifting by.

That's wild. After that description, it baffles me that a steelhead will inhale a size 5 silver spinner in air-clear water; what could be more gaudy? Does anyone know a fish whisperer that can pry some information loose from these metalheads? I'm confused too.

I floated both.

This is one of those things that makes fishing exactly that, fishing.

Don't think we'll ever understand everything. I've seen them shy away from the tiniest stuff and them pounce on huge stuff.

I like to call it "shock therapy" ... spooky fish that won't touch all your dreamy tiny stuff. Throw on the most obnoxious thing you have in the box and give it a whirl. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it does.

I've seen it happen with winter fish, salmon (perhaps more so with them than anything else) and summer fish ... ineteresting with the summer fish since I usually do it with flies ... we'll fish our standard patterns and sizes (usually 2's, 4's, and 6's where I fish), do okay, lose the "bite" and gear down to 8's, 10's, and 12's and do okay, then nothing will touch any of those. Then we often break out our "spoon fly" wihich is about a 2/0 tied up with as much silver tinsel ans we can get on the hook, and guess what ... they'll take those. Go figure!