Drifting for steelhead

this saturday i am going out for steelhead for my first time ever. we are going to be bottom bouncing with streamers... i have looked up bottom bouncing and people say its a lost art and very hard to tell bite from bottom. anyone know a secret or tips for telling a bit from the bottom? i have just recently bought a 10,6 shakespear im7 graphite rod light action and a shimano sahara 3000fe series with 2lb diameter braid. i have my rig all set up but need tips or tricks from telling bite from bottom...plz help!!

fisher222

ps i am going to port dalhousie

keep the line tight without actually pulling the fly. that helps a bit.. also adjust your weight according to flow and depth.. to much weight hangs up, to little weight and you wont be on bottom enough... it takes practice..

something else to consider... try a bass drop shot rig instead of the traditional bottom drift rig.. the weight on the bottom keeps a tight line, the bait stay in the strike zone and when the fish taps the bait you feel it better because the line is tight.. not many guys use this yet... but it works very well. at least for me.. Good luck..

the method graham is mentioning with the weight below the bait is great for non-float bottom bouncing. if youre going that way then i have to agree.

if youre going with float, youre gonna have to spend some time adjusting weight and length untill you match the location..
with time youll get good at guesstimating how much you need or youll just be going by memory after a couple of trips, but on new bodies of water with no one to tell you what to do its just gonna be some trial and error and watching how often/little your bait ticks off the bottom during the drift and how your float is sitting on the surface..

youll get it bro.. i had most of it down after one season to where i wasnt wasting time with that stuff and instead wasting time losing fish lol

as for telling bite from bottom it takes some time but i responded to your other post with a bit more details about that..

Bottom bouncing takes a lot of trial and error. You want enough weight to just barely be making contact with the bottom. If you have this balance right you should be able to feel a tick every once in a while as the weight touches bottom, when a fish hits it could be as subtle as the drift stopping, or the fish could practically rip the rod from your hands, it all depends how aggressive they are. When just starting out, if in doubt set the hook. worst case scenario you loose a little terminal gear to bottom.

fishfearme said:

Bottom bouncing takes a lot of trial and error. You want enough weight to just barely be making contact with the bottom. If you have this balance right you should be able to feel a tick every once in a while as the weight touches bottom, when a fish hits it could be as subtle as the drift stopping, or the fish could practically rip the rod from your hands, it all depends how aggressive they are. When just starting out, if in doubt set the hook. worst case scenario you loose a little terminal gear to bottom.

Click to expand...

couldnt have explained it much simpler than this!

Maybe a stupid question here. But what bait are you using?

I have been what I consider bottom bouncing for years, using roe sack, one of the newbie tips that really helped was using a floating egg, We used to try to shave a bit off of the floater bead depending on what waters we were fishing as well the size of the sac we were using. Really helped with keeping the bait just off the bottom, would make contact every now and then so you would get a feel for the bait comming in contact.

I bottom bounced on P Dalhousie, it is difficult to pull it off if you're not familiar with the body of water. It's best if you know someone who knows the water best. we were using 6' nightcrawlers, i totally suck at it, catching 3 fish in 6 hours of fishing while my friend had about 10. you need a lot of trial and error but who doesn't in fishing?

Maybe this can help?

[video]http://youtu.be/YUVylfwalXE[/video]