Lack of snow, rain hampered annual steelhead run in Erie, here's why

Reflecting on the steelhead season, anglers believe a lack of rain and snow negatively impacted the way fish navigated Lake Erie tributaries.

Steelhead leave Lake Erie in the early fall and spend time in small creeks to spawn over the winter months.

This year, the fish didn’t always have the ability to make it far upstream.

“The quality of the run is weather dependent,” said Chris Larson, president of the Pennsylvania Steelhead Association.

Jim Sullivan, National Weather Service forecaster, said Erie received less rain and snow than most years. The county received 24.8 inches of snow at the Erie International Airport during the winter, which is 77 inches less than the normal snowfall of 102.5 inches.

“That’s the big thing, no snow to melt,” he said about low water levels in creeks and streams.

In October, 4.3 inches of rain was recorded which was .08 of an inch less than average. November had 2.08 inches of rain, or 1.67 inches below normal. December had 3.27 inches of rain, which is 0.9 of an inch below normal. January had 4.08 inches of rain which was .67 of an inch above normal.

“February was quite a dry month,” Sullivan said. February received only 1.3 inches, 1.22 inches below normal and March received 1.92 inches, 1.16 below normal.

“February and March being quite dry, after a mild winter without a lot of snow to melt, that’s probably what I would guess is causing the tributaries to run drier than they might expect,” he said.

Larson said the lack of rain played a role in the quality of fishing that was available.

“I don’t think it was a very good year. It started out very dry in September," he said. "And then when we did get rain we would get a lot of it all of the sudden. The creeks would be unfishable for a day or two and then they would come down and we would have dry spells in between the rains."

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He said the fish would try to swim upstream but the water levels dropped quickly and the fish would get stuck in the deeper holes.

“People were hitting those holes and a lot of those fish got caught over and over again,” he said. 

Larson said the action fizzled out a few weeks ago as the tributaries didn’t receive the fresh run of fish that he’s seen in other years.

“The best run we had in the last few years was two years ago,” he said. That year there was rain in September and they also received remnant storms from southern hurricanes that lasted several days at a time. “The soaking rains for a couple days really helps us out,” he said. There were steady rains that year and Larson remembers there was plenty of snow that eventually melted to sustain the water levels. “We haven’t had that the last two years,” he said.

Larson said the fish were nice sized this year with some spanning over 30 inches long.

“They were probably better than average size. A lot of big fish were caught,” he said. “There obviously is a good forage base for them right now. They are getting well fed.”

Steelhead angler survey

The Steelhead Association has organized an online angler survey for each of the past three years. Larson said they had 475 surveys last year and this year 293 anglers submitted information. 

“Last year in the month of January, there were 120 or 130 more surveys than there were in the January of 2024. My recollection is that last year there was a real good run late in the fall and early winter and I think that’s what helped to increase the survey numbers.”

He said when people fill out the surveys, the association can get a better feel of the catch rates people are experiencing on the creeks from year to year.

Ari Capotis, a member of the association helps organize the survey as part of her volunteer efforts to improve the fishery. She is also the Keystone Fly Girl fishing guide, northwest regional vice president of the PA Council of Trout Unlimited and member of Trout Unlimited’s Women’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee.

She enjoys reading the comments the anglers leave about their day on their water.

“It’s boots on the ground observatory information,” she said.

The comments range from the quality of fishing to spotting other anglers doing illegal activities like snagging fish. 

She is seeing more women going fishing for steelhead than before. Of this year’s survey results, 6.1% were submitted by females. “I think that number should be higher, but at least it’s not 1%,” she said.

The survey revealed about 10% of the anglers caught at least one brown trout and more than 70% of the fishers are practicing catch and release with their game fish. Almost everyone, 99.7%, said they plan to fish for steelhead in the future.

The survey results are shared with the Lake Erie Research Unit of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission to help manage the fishery.

Capotis said most of the steelhead have left the creeks and were back in Lake Erie by the last week of March. 

In the fall, she agreed that a lot of the fish were stuck in some of the larger holes above Route 5. “The fish go where they find water,”  she said.

They were starting to find fish upstream in late October which is later than most years. 

“We just didn’t get consistent fall rain like we normally do and we didn’t really get any snow,” she said.

In November, she did some fishing in Lake Erie where the fish have some room to run.

“They can let their horses run. You certainly know what you’re battling on the other end of your line. Sometimes they make a beeline straight to Canada and you’re just hoping your drag is going to slow them down,” she said. 

Fishing in the creeks did improve with some rain events. “They were really great fish that were coming up the system. They had good color, they were pretty long,” she said.

What was interesting to her was that the southern shores of Lake Erie would get missed by the rainstorms.

“Buffalo was getting rain that we weren’t getting,” she said.

“We were much later than normal,” she said about the good steelhead fishing. “The bite stayed pretty consistent until the water level started to really drop,” she said. 

Baits

Capotis used wet flies with soft hackles in the clear water. “I found that very natural colored flies, trout style soft hackles were the ticket,” she said adding that she used size 16 hooks with little or no weight.

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With the low clear water she said people weren’t using bobbers or indicators as the fish would become spooked. “They would get lockjaw and not eating what you were offering,” she said. The benefit of hiring a guide is that the expert knows what to use with the changing water conditions. “You can cut down on the learning curve if you are up here for a limited amount of time. There’s absolutely the sweet reward of figuring out how to succeed on your own, but there’s nothing wrong with hiring somebody to pick their brain, shorten your learning curve and better enjoy your time out there.”

Bill Luffy, who is co-owner of Tudor Hook-n-Nook in Lake City, with his wife, Lisa Noble, and partner, Keith Eshbaugh, also said water levels played a factor in the success of anglers.

“Once we finally did get some rain, the fish got spread out, more fresh would come in,” he said.

“Through late November and through December were incredible fishing. There were fish from the top of the creeks to down at the mouths,” he said with fresh fish swimming in after each rain.

“I’m not going to call it a banner or stellar year, but it was an above average catch ratio for the people who were getting out to catch them,” Luffy said, adding the number of big fish, 10-pound plus fish was “way up this year.”

The fish were biting on smaller presentations. “When the water got low and clear, our small nymphs and bug patterns were working well and standard minnow pattern flies and white woolly buggers and black woolly buggers and egg patterns did really well,” he said.

Looking ahead to this fall’s steelhead run, Luffy said, “We can hope it’s as good this year as it was this past year. If we get the amount of fish we had last year, for the most part we had a fair, a solid run and that was in most of the tributaries. More rain early would have done wonders.”

Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him atbwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook@whipkeyoutdoors, and Instagram atwhipkeyoutdoors.