why do everyone want to catch a steelhead? does it fight just better than other salmons? or something else? beautiful? hard to find?
Because it is the closest to hunting, where finding the prey is 90% of the thrill.
When you find where it hides, steelhead is fairly easy to catch. They are quite gullible actually and will fall for just about anything shiny or tasty looking.
Salmon fishing (except to a certain extent coho fishing) is really not fishing at all. It is intercepting migrating fish which are on a spawning mission. I still do it for the meat, but with each passing year the appeal diminishes. Steelhead and trout fishing, on the other hand, is becoming more and more my kind of thing.
When you try steelheading and get skunked 10 times in a row only to catch your first fish on the 11th outing (after the proverbial 1000 casts), you will understand the appeal.
Any person who fishes for steelhead the same way they fish for salmon is either an unenlightened beginner or an incurable meat-head. I'll help the former; God help the latter.