Steelhead
Steelhead fishing in British Columbia is one of the more challenging river sport fishing opportunities we have to offer. Apart from salmon fishing and sturgeon fishing, British Columbia is also highly regarded as one of the top Steelhead river fishing destinations in North America and some of the world’s most renowned steelhead fishing rivers flow through our province. For alternative gallery, click here.
There is something to be said about the steelhead when anglers travel thousands of miles in hope of catching a few of these hard-fighting and acrobatic beauties. They aren’t nearly as abundant as our salmon and at times they can seem to be elusive and “moody”, testing the angler’s abilities, knowledge, and experience to its fullest. It seems that this sort of challenge grows on certain anglers, and the steelhead has a large world-wide following of die-hard “steelheaders”, who travel all over in hopes of landing that trophy steelhead of a lifetime. For many river anglers, finding, hooking and landing a big steelhead is the ultimate experience in river fishing!
Steelhead Fishing
The steelhead is an anadromous (sea-going) trout that spends a portion of its life in the ocean, before returning to fresh water to spawn. Although certain stocks of steelhead can attain weights in excess of 30+lbs, most of the fish we hook are 8-15lbs, with fish up to 20+lbs available. We do hook fish on most of our steelhead fishing outings when using natural and artificial baits. While steelhead fly fishing is a bit more challenging, patience and persistence can pay off with some amazing rewards.
In this part of British Columbia, we offer steelhead river fishing trips on several different rivers for both wild and hatchery fish, with each river providing the angler with it’s own unique character, setting, and spectacular scenery. Our winter-run steelhead are present in our rivers from Dec.-April, with the best fishing available from Feb-April. The winter steelhead runs typically produce substantially more fish than our summer steelhead runs.