Finding Fish In Big Rivers (8 of 11)

We've got this giant river here, the Skeena. How can we possibly catch a steelhead when there is so much water?

A: Well Tom, you've got to break it down. You've got to look for different structure and look for a funnel; a narrow point in the river where they come up out of heavy fast water and they need to slow down long enough and you can get a good swing.

The way I describe the flow of the water that you're looking for, it's a nice flat, even, table-top surface almost,but with broken cobbly stones and it's flowing almost at a fast walk. If you can visualize that and just see the speed of the water as here. When we look here, you can see that the inside is nice and soft and ripply, and if you go out any further, it's actually pushing very hard.

That's how we break it down. You need to find the lane, Tom, in order to get into the fish consistently. These are migrating fish. They're not holding fish; they'll stop for a rest, they may stop for a break, then they're going to continue on in their migration to all the legendary tributaries of the Skeena River.