In Japan fishways are usually constructed more mild slope than 10%, because the targets of the fishways are almost always Ayu fish which is 10-20 cm long. However, the fishways in sabo dams sometimes need to be settled more steep slope than 10%. Therefore the authors tried to examine the possibility of a steep pool-and-weir fishway for sabo dams through fishway experiments using Ayu fish. The authors confirmed that the Denil type fishways are not suitable for Ayu fish in the field. As a result of the experiments, it is confirmed that Ayu ascends the pool-and-weir fishways of 20-30% gradient in limited water levels (less than 10cm high on each weir).