How Much Distance Can a Steelie Cover...

with all the showers/storms the past couple of days my first thought is swarms of steelies entering the creeks...but then i rationally think about it because its still relatively early in the season(first good rains at least)..my question though, is with the creeks in the condition they are in(blown out or just up good), how far will a steelhead go in a period of a day or so(mileage wise)?...will the "swarm" just swim swim swim miles upon miles until the water goes back down then whereever they are is where they are? or do they just go up a little bit then as the season progresses they make their way up?...never really looked into this...just wondering...

..sort of was..but nah, actually i really just didnt know how far they traveled in short amounts of time and i couldnt find it on google.......90 miles??

Given flow and temps, I believe our confused mut we call steelhead would run to Alaska if the cricks would let 'em!

I think that someone, sometime posted an article that stated they had put a tracking device on one and it had traveled 5.5 miles in one day.  But it's luggage went up another creek.  LOL!   So 5.5 miles would be a good maximum.  Some seem to never leave certain pools though.  Anybody have a reference to the article?

kingnuke32, and I thought Skip's avator was cool!

i planned on making my first trip up monday, hopefully i can get to see some fish up near the legion hole. think theres any chance of that happening? thats what like 4, or 5 miles up stream?

I guess they'll go as far as they want.  I remember during the low flows of September and early October of last year, many fish were well above 90.

if I'm not mistaken, they've been tracked in the western rivers to travel well over 10 miles in a night.

as far as some your questions, here's what i've observed;

some fish will rock and roll to the top in a couple days.
it's rare that there's more than a handful that travel that far that fast though.
Most stop and hang out in favorable spots (to them) along the way.

It can vary from year to year as to how many and how far they go.
It can also vary how many hang out in a staging spot and how long they hang there


..L.T.A.

thanks for the help on my thoughts of where i might want to fish. its a monday not many people will be there right oh well, i'll get some either way. i'm just not to big on fishing anything on any of the lower parts of the streams. but maybe i'll have to...

A study was conducted on Pine Creek in Pa, by the Pa Grand Canyon a while back and a tagged rainbow traveled 76 miles in a week. They can go a long way when they want to, some fish come in  and don't move too far and others travel very far upstream in the H2O levels allow. 

ORIGINAL: brown_trt

with all the showers/storms the past couple of days my first thought is swarms of steelies entering the creeks...but then i rationally think about it because its still relatively early in the season(first good rains at least)..my question though, is with the creeks in the condition they are in(blown out or just up good), how far will a steelhead go in a period of a day or so(mileage wise)?...will the "swarm" just swim swim swim miles upon miles until the water goes back down then whereever they are is where they are? or do they just go up a little bit then as the season progresses they make their way up?...never really looked into this...just wondering...

 
 
MYUNDERSTANDING IS THAT MOST FISH RUN AT NIGHT AND USUALLY TRAVEL 6 MILES IF THEY WANT TO     GLEN

A guide last weekend in NY said that the Kings/Cohos can move 3 miles in an hour given the right conditions
....and thats even dodging the war zone....hmmmm...maybe thats why they swim so fast....like its a suicide run to the hatchery  

thanks guys! to go to the top of the page, yes i had a mind blank moment......90 miles would be a bit far considering i dont think there is a creek 90 miles long...unless they were heading to Huron...my bad....but all of the answers were kind of round a bout what i was thinking but i just wasnt sure and couldnt find anything...stilll pretty impressive that they do what they do though...even if it is just a couple of miles..that'd be like me running up hill in hurricane force winds and **** hitting me in the face the whole time..dont see how they do it....

Also, the fish use a lot of energy getting up stream.  They will also lose a lot of weight!   AND Since they are building up a lot of lactose in their muscles and using up their fat reserves that's why they don't taste very good when they are caught upstream.  Fresh fish taste best!  Not that any syeelhead tastes particularly good.

I was at lower Elk last year for the first run also. It was a blast your right. I'm the type of person that will use whatever is working, and that day at elk access it just happened to be chartruese power bait. I ended up going through 2 jars in about 6 hours. Hey if thats what i have to do to catch fish and its still early in the season then what the heck. There seems to a ton of flow out there on the tribs right now and its lasted for the last couple days so i'm thinking that i'll be able to get away from that and still have a good day.