Fly Fishing some of the Most Miserable Conditions on Earth! (Erie Steelhead Pt 1)

FISHING FOR HUGE FISH IN A SMALL CREEK - MY FIRST STEELHEAD EVER!

For years now I’ve wanted to make a trip up to Lake Erie to fish for steelhead. It’s not even that it’s a particularly hard trip for me to make, I’ve just never done it. So, in an attempt to avoid the crowds that are synonymous with Erie steelhead, I decided to make the trip up in January… which ended up being one my dumbest decisions to date. But that will become progressively more clear as this video goes on.

The idea with this trip was that the cold weather would deter other anglers from fishing, and since I can handle the cold relatively well, I’d have the creeks to myself. Which was correct, but you can see why. There’s nothing more frustrating than not exactly knowing what you’re doing and not even being able to learn because you can’t even get your flies down in front of fish. At the risk of boring everyone to death I’ll give you a quick recap of the following few hours of fishing. I left the creek you just saw me fishing and went to another one only to see that it was totally frozen over, so much so that I didn’t even make a cast. Then I decided to go for a drive and drive over as many creeks as possible until I found open water. And then as soon as I found open water that lake effect snow hit like a ton of bricks. But you can’t catch steelhead sitting on the couch can you?

It’s worth mentioning that because this was a smaller creek I decided to bring my euro rod, thinking that tight lining would give me the best chance at a fish. I wanted to be able to say I got a bobber down, but I'm just not super comfortable with that style of fishing. What I failed to realize was that this was a horrible idea given the conditions, which is why I slowly start to lose my mind.

As if the 15 degree weather wasn’t bad enough the wind was howling. With gusts up to 40 miles per hour and temperatures in the teens I quickly realized that any water that I got on my rod, reel, or line quickly froze. Not only that but I was battling near white out conditions with lake effect snow scouring the area. These were definitely the most miserable conditions I've ever fished!

It’s almost comical how much ice was on my line leading up to catching that fish. My rod was literally doubled over just carrying the weight of the ice, and my reel was frozen solid. I continued fishing for maybe 20 minutes before I decided I had better quit and try to make it back before the roads got too bad. But it was too late and my 30 minute drive back to the Airbnb turned to an hour drive because of the blizzard. However you weren’t going to catch me complaining after catching my first Erie steelhead ever. I’ll have the second part of my Lake Erie steelhead adventure come out next week! Thanks for watching.

#flyfishing #fishing #steelhead #troutfishing #outdoors #nature #sports