Very interesting, this is all new to me. The small rivers I fished in the past one pretty much picked a stretch of water and drifted some eggs or a night crawler with a corkie or spin&glow and took salmon or steelhead.

Can anyone recomend a good read in regaurds to the habitat and habits of kings and steelhead?

Thank you for all the info, I was on the wrong train of thought.

Trey Combs stuff is good...

Rodderick Haig-Brown stuff is good..

Steelhead: The Supreme Trophy Trout by Barry M. Thornton is awesome...

some of the above 3 may not be in print any longer, so check Amazon or Ebay and see what you can find there....

I tie bags for steelhead. It's easy to tie up a batch of eggs in multiple colors of netting. You'd be surprised how well chartreuse netting works. Most of the time I tie up 4-6 different colored bags because ya never know which ones gonna be the hot color of the day.

By the way, I don't keep boots. I just scrape skeins which takes me all of 5 minutes.

You must be giving me some old classics. Those authors have been around a while but I have never read any of their work.

Thanks for the recommendations.

That's a crime around these parts..wouldn't recommend that BO.

here's my 2 cents:

Steelhead: stick with skein eggs, and I recommend a plain and simple borax cure .

Coho: Skein eggs cured with many off the shelf cures (in red), pretty much any of them will work as long as it is red - or they won't work that is just a coho fishes prerogative...

Chinook: Here is where roe sacks can be of some use. I've found that Chinook are the pickiest about the bait you present and when I've had the time the day before I fished and had loose eggs to use... I would make up 6 or more variations of roe sacks, for example: eggs and prawn, eggs and tuna, eggs and herring, then some with various added liquid scents. you get the idea. oh and also, they are a good place to put the heads you tear off a sandshrimp... if you're into that sort of thing.

Welcome to a new addiction. Ditto on most of the spawn sack responses. Not really needed here in the NW. I would suggest subscribing to a couple of the northwest fishing mags. As mentioned learning run timing and various techniques and setups is necessary to effectively fish different types of water. Learn to read water and where fish will hold. Salmon and steelhead like different water. Slower pools for salmon. Steelhead like cover and flow. The magazines give great basic information on both species. Have you read all the tips Bob has posted on PP? Good tutorials. Youtube has videos on just about everything. Lastly I would strongly suggest contacting Bob or one of the advertising guides on this site to take you fishing. You will learn more in one float than you can learn on your own in several years.

Tight lines

Good point on the use of sacks for chinook jason. I typically bring about 3 or 4 different cures of wet eggs to figure out what the flavor of the day is.

+1. Scott Haugen has a book I have seen at Bobs too. I think the Title is 300 Tips to catching more salmon and steelhead. Thats a lot of tips. If you go to the Amato Books site there should be a list of a crap load of technique specific books.

My best advise would be to not try and learn or master everything at once. Focus on a specific technique for a particular system. If you are going to be primarily targeting steelhead in smaller systems I would strongly suggest on focusing on a bobber and jig approach.I believe It is one of the easier techniques to get the hang of and it will put fish on the bank and build confidence. The first step is to figure out where you want to fish and what will be in that system and whem.

We all have to start somewhere. My appologies if I was a dick.

Why start now?

Most of those newer books I have read, but in all honesty I think I might have been concentrating more on the how to's and the what withs, and wasn't retaining much about habitat and the targeting of a single species.

Being a saltwater guy the beauty of ocean fishing is that you present a good looking bait and anything out there that swims will hit it, the idea that one need target either salmon or steelhead was a train of thought that has kept me confused somewhat. Now using a rod rated for 8-12 is making more sense to me.

I think I'll give all the books I read a second read, and hopefully take different information away this time.

Thanks for all the advice. YBD, no big deal, life is too short to sweat the little stuff. I get that to some who are experienced, that the basics seem like common sense, but one needs to get the mindset directed in the right direction first. The fact that you all target one or the other, leads me to believe I need to hit the reboot and start over, because my mindset has been set for salmon and steelhead at the same time.

Except for springers in May....... I've caught them on eggs and/or sand shrimp when the line went straight down their throat. Couldn't see the hook. It was buried somewhere in their stomach, along with the bait. That was clearly a result of feeding behavior.

With tributary fall fish upon us, another easy productive method for both kings and silvers is casting plugs. Pretty straight forward in terms of tackle and hard to do wrong as long as you have your plug tuned (adjusting the eyelet and/or hooks to ensure it swims and dives straight).

And I should mention since I am drowning the forum with questions, I will be strictly a winter time fisherman on the rivers, summer being the hot season out in the ocean, hence my leaning toward heavier rods. Couple that with me working in construction, and winters will be a much better time for me to travel to the rivers for a few days at a shot.

I got baptized this morning!