The hard part of fishing a waking fly for summer steelhead isn’t the cast, and it isn’t the pattern. It’s controlling what the fly does once it’s on the water — the speed of the wake it throws, the shape of the “V” trailing behind it, and whether you can hold that wake even when the current changes under it. And then there’s the part that undoes more anglers than any of that: not setting the hook when a fish boils on your fly. Get the wake right and steelhead will come up for it in clear July water. Whether you land it comes down to what you do after you see the boil.

Skating Isn’t Waking

The vocabulary matters here, and most coverage gets it wrong. Bill McMillan reserved skating for flies tied with stiff hackle that ride on top of the surface film on a tight line. Waking describes flies — and hitched flies — that ride in the film and shove a wake. By that definition, nearly everything anglers now call a skater (Bombers, Grease Liners, Muddlers, foam-lipped wakers) is really a waking fly; the true high-riding skaters like the old stiff-hackled Steelhead Bee have mostly dropped out of use. Anglers call it skating, and that’s the word everyone reaches for — but on the water, you’re almost always waking.