I know some of you all might thank of this as silly but I'm going here anyway.
Power bait egg clusters are the newest addition to my hip pack. I'm not the greatest steelheader,but I know how to fish for most of the salmon that still run our waters. I started using the gel they put out a few years ago, works great. The chum tear it apart. I used power bait clusters for lake trout and had good resaults.Why you might ask, well I ran out of power bait. I guess I just want some feed back. With native fish dying out and hatchery fish our main catch,souldn't we use what the game department feeds them? What shot do you expect from nats? Just pissen on the screen, Don't mind me I'm Drunk JCB

Power bait egg clusters do work for steelhead. They work for natives also. I won't go into specifics but they do work. Can't use them in the selective fisheries area, but you can in bait areas.

JCB, the simulated rubber egg clusters work really well; particularly when used with both egg and shrimp scent applied. The 2 places they work best are in faster steelhead water where the fish don't have much time to inspect the eggs, and also on jigheads. Yup, jigheads. Cerise, white, or brass/chrome heads with the rubber cluster is a 'go to'. ... My friend Mark Anderson and I have been experimenting with a lot of different rubber on jigheads for steelhead. We started with the pink worm; pinching off a half inch of the 4" Powerbait pink worms and threading them onto 1/4 oz. jigheads with an inch overhang or so, to floatfish just up off bottom a bit. In many cases it works better than driftfishing them. I then started doing the same with the rubber eggs. Did OK on the Powerbaits and Smelly Jelly egg scented pinkish ones. But the one that has done the best is the Seducer brand - they do look better with a steelhead orange egg color, including the right amount of transparency, maybe smell better to the fish too. They are made on the north Oregon coast somewhere, so may not be as available in Washington? These 2 things are sure great egg savers, thus also more incentive to release native steelhead where harvestable. As for fishing slow deep water the real eggs will work better as the fish have more time to inspect them - feel and smell the real thing. I think they will not work as well on river kings for this reason, but I haven't tried them enough yet to know. And there are a variety of real fishy looking rubber things in the bass departments that are going to be taking steelies on the end of my line from now on. Pink worms are NOT the only thing that works well. Experiment out there - it will pay off!

[ 04-24-2001: Message edited by: RT ]

JCB
Rubber imitation baits work great for Steelhead and Salmon. RT and I have been doing a lot of experimenting this last winter and have been surprised with the results. There are several ways to fish imitation baits and on my web site I show one way to thread a rubber worm onto a jig head.
Mark

www.firstcastjigs.com

Coming from Tillamook Im a real egg and lure fisherman. When I first saw some guys using a pink worm to catch steelhead down here I snicker a bit to myself but not after watching them catch fish. This has sort of opened my eyes some to trying new things on our fish. Thank you for the ideas.