908 | Fishing Smaller Flies for Great Lakes Steelhead and Salmon with Alex Belonga
Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing Podcast
Dave Stewart
4.7 • 530 Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2026
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
908 Show Notes: https://wetflyswing.com/908
Presented by: Golden Fly Shop, Fly Fish with me Utah, Drifthook Fly Fishing, Pescador on the Fly
Do you remember when intruders took over with big profiles and tons of flash? But what if the real edge is going smaller? In this episode, we're digging into fishing smaller flies for Great Lakes steelhead and salmon, and what happens when you shift from bulk to balance and from heavy push to a more subtle presence.
Alex Belonga breaks it down, from Temple Dogs to sparse hair wings, plus how presentation, movement, and fly design all play into getting more eats.
908 Show Notes: https://wetflyswing.com/908
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Do you remember when intruders took over? Big profiles, flash, movement? But what if the real edge is going smaller? |
| 0:08.0 | What if the fish that just slid past your size 2 intruder would have eaten a sparse size 10 hairwing? |
| 0:14.0 | Today we talk about the other side of modern steelhead and salmon fishing. In this episode, we connect where Lake Superior pours into Lake |
| 0:21.3 | Huron, and we break down what happens when you shift from bulk to balance, from heavy push |
| 0:26.4 | to subtle presence. Alex Belongi is here, and he's going to share all these details, including |
| 0:32.3 | the Temple Dog versus the bulky intruders. We're going to get into what this pushing water is all about. |
| 0:39.1 | We're going to talk about tubes versus double flies and what actually lands more fish. |
| 0:43.8 | We're going to talk Great Lakes migratory rainbows versus coastal. It's all here today. |
| 0:48.4 | And if you've ever stood in a run wondering where to go bigger or if you should actually go |
| 0:53.4 | lighter, this conversation is for you. All right, let's get into it. Here he is. Alex Belongi. You can find him at Straits on the Fly on Instagram. How you doing, Alex? Good, Dave. How are you doing, buddy? Pretty good. Pretty good. I'm excited about this one today. We're going to be talking back into Steelhead Flies and kind of everything you do. I think I first heard about you on In the Bucket. |
| 1:15.8 | Brian had you on the podcast episode number six. So that was a couple years ago. People can go back and listen to that story. You're on there with Trevor. |
| 1:23.3 | And I think was who was the other guest on there? Was it just you and Trevor? |
| 1:27.5 | Yep. |
| 1:27.9 | Just Trevor Kovitch and I and Brian was spent a lot of time on that one too. |
| 1:33.2 | Yeah, yeah, that's right. |
| 1:34.3 | So basically we have that episode. |
| 1:36.4 | And then, but today we're going to talk more. |
| 1:38.2 | We're going to dig deeper about, you know, tying flies, steelhead flies, fishing all that. |
| 1:42.5 | But just give us an update in the last couple |
| 1:44.5 | years, maybe what's been going on with you? Yeah, man. So I'll back up just a little bit. |
| 1:50.5 | 2018, I picked up a vice and, you know, just started tying him, really loved it. And, you know, |
| 2:00.1 | it was just kind of tying every day. And it really helps to feed the |
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