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| Gary Loomis was just getting a solid handle on the rod building business when I shot this picture of him years ago. He brought the same kind of study and enthusiasm to his steelhead fishing early on as he did later as an award-winning rod builder constructing some of the world's finest fishing rods. |
A Guy Named Gary: Part 3
By Stan Fagerstrom
Good bait and proper presentation are both extremely important if you hope to score consistently when it comes to catching steelhead.
In my previous two columns I’ve detailed how the guy who came up with some of the best rods you can wrap your hands around is also one of the most skilled steelhead anglers I’ve known. That man is Gary Loomis, the founder of G.Loomis Rods. I’ve already detailed some of the things Gary says we can all do to bend the odds in our favor when we’re after steelhead. This time around let’s consider his final thoughts where baits and presentation are concerned.
For starters, Loomis takes a dim view of prepared salmon eggs you can purchase at the nearest sporting goods store. He maintains you can't buy good bait. That's why he puts up his own. He prefers steelhead eggs when he can get them. When he can't he opts for eggs from coho salmon. The recipe he uses is one cup of salt, two cups of sugar and three cups of borax. He mixes these ingredients together, then smothers his eggs with it.
"There are lots of different egg recipes," Loomis says, "some work and some don't. It's essential to have good eggs if you expect to catch steelhead consistently."
One of the things this internationally respected rod maker does is make darn sure he takes care of his eggs when they first come out of a fish. He takes the same care of his eggs as he does his fish. He carries Zip-loc bags in his fishing jacket. As soon as a female fish he wants to keep is caught, he cleans it and places the eggs in the plastic bag. Then the eggs go into an ice chest and they are
prepared as soon as he gets home.
Timing, knowing your water, having good equipment and the right eggs doesn’t mean squat unless your presentation is right when you get to a drift where steelhead are holding. "All of the points I've listed are important," Loomis says, "but presentation is number one. The best bait is no good if all you do is throw it out and reel it back in. I can follow somebody who has good eggs down a river and catch fish behind him if his presentation isn't right."
So what is a good presentation of a steelhead bait like salmon eggs? Loomis has an answer. "You've got to put yourself into your fishing," he says. "Learn to know exactly what your bait is doing as it moves along with the current every instant it’s out there."
Gary says 99 per cent of the time steelhead will be two to three inches off the bottom. This applies in both summer and winter. You've got to get your bait down where they are to catch them. “Not just now and then,” he says, “but on every cast.”
Watch Loomis when a fish picks up, and I’ve had that opportunity many times, and you'll note a couple of things. The first is he doesn’t strike the instant he feels a bump. He lowers his rod for about a heartbeat before he snaps it up and back. "By dropping my rod tip," he says, "I'm able to let a fish take the bait on a slack line. That way it's much easier for them to get hold of the bait and for me to get a solid hook up."
Loomis estimates he has caught 50 steelhead of 20 pounds or more. Most fishermen consider themselves lucky if they get one that size in a lifetime. Chances are you won't catch fish as Loomis does even if you follow all of his advice, but you will have a whole lot better chance. If you doubt that now, you won't after you've done it.
Gary Loomis doesn’t spend as much time steelheading these days as he once did. He sold his rod building business to the Shimano folks a few years back. He still works in an advisory and promotional category for Shimano some of the time, but as often as not he’s off on big game hunting adventures that have taken him from Alaska to Africa and a whole lot of spots in between. Today this rod-building genius, and that’s exactly Loomis is when it comes to graphite technology, is into big game hunting deeply as he once was into steelhead fishing.
I reckon the steelhead here in the Pacific Northwest are just as happy about that. A passel of them saw a whole lot more him than they wanted when he was still spending so much of his time on the water.
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| Rod builder Gary Loomis and Steve Rajeff are all smiles as they display a beautiful pair of steelhead from the North Fork of the Lewis River. Rajeff, an executive with G.Loomis Rods, is an internationally known casting expert. Like other G.Loomis executives, he is also a cracking good angler. |
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