Creek Addict

I headed up to the Salmon River this past weekend with hopes of landing some steel. Well…that didn’t happen, as a matter of fact, I didn’t even hook into one (I suck). The day wasn’t a total waste though. I fished with my wife, who I must say, didn’t complain about the cold at all. The only complaint I heard was at the very end of the day, she said she couldn’t feel her toes anymore.  We got to the pool we planned on fishing to find that there was no one there (usually a good indicator on a river like that, that there aren’t a ton of steelhead there). I grabbed the head of the pool  and she got the middle. No more than two minutes into the day and her rod is bent over. The drag wasn’t screaming, so we instantly knew it wasn’t a steelhead. We landed the fish, a nice healthy female brown. We get back to fishing after some photos and two drifts later, I’m into one, same thing ,no drag peeling runs. We net the brown, take a few photos, and now I’m thinking we are going to have a great day. Well, those were actually the last fish we landed. We hooked into some more, including some giants. My wife hooked into one huge, really pissed off steelhead, she fought it for about 10 seconds, but that was it. Where we fished was actually nice though. if you can believe it, we fished on public land and had the place to ourselves. If we would have caught more than a few fish, we would have been set.

Kymm’s brown. I couldn’t have been more proud, this was her first big fish.

She sure liked the Cabela’s egg.

My brown took a 6mm peach bead.

What kind of fish crazed lunatic wakes up at 2:45 in the morning to drive 4.5 hours to stand in the cold and blasting winds, just for the chance to dance with a fish or two? I do. Jordan does. I’m sure Nick would have, too, but he had stuff to do. I read somewhere once that you should always kick ass and be awesome and catch fish and make stories or some crap. That’s how we roll. Pretty much. My wife is due in a couple of weeks, so this trip was probably the last trip I’m going to have up to the Salmon for a while. I had to make it count. When the alarm went off at 2:45, I was already nervous about how things were going to play out. The weather was calling for a snow/rain mix with winds up to 30mph. If anything, I was hoping the less than ideal weather would keep some of the fisherman out of the water. On the ride up to Pulaski I tried to prepare myself for the long day ahead. I wanted to have fun, but most importantly, I needed to catch fish. If the fishing is slow, you’re going to have to work for them. You have to be prepared to work for them. Every cast needs to be the cast, the one that’s gonna catch the next fish. You have to be ready to go to work.

We pulled into the small dirt parking lot and got geared up by like 7:45 or so. It was time to do work. We walked down to the water and talked to a few guys standing in the first run you see when you get down to the river. Everyone was reporting no catches as of yet, and that because of the low flows, it had been slow all week. I thought to myself, “I hope this 4.5 hour drive was worth it”. I walked to the head of the big run and made my first cast. This cast was the cast. The drift was nearly perfect. I watched my little indicator ride along the seem until it got just below me. Nothing. Okay, so that one wasn’t the cast. So I tried again. Made the cast. The cast. I watched the indicator glide down the same seem. This one was it. I could feel it. The indicator stopped and I set the hook. This was it. My day was made. I could literally feel the anxiety of not catching a fish fall away from me as the fish slid into the net. We snapped a few quick pictures and put her back in the water. No matter what happened the rest of the day, I had caught a fish. It was time to have fun.

After catching the first fish, we decided to head down river to a couple of different spots that I thought might have less pressure and more fish. After making countless drifts to the same section of water, Jordan hooked up to something. Something big. How big? We’ll never know. The fish came off after a short fight. The only thing we saw was a flash. We fished all the likely spots, drifting different patterns to fish we knew were there. I decided it was time to try some salmon colored sucker spawn. A couple of drifts with the thing and I netted my first brown of the day (pictured on the left). She was spawned out and skinny. It didn’t take much to put her in the net. I continued to throw my fly in the same drift. I made every drift like it was the drift. A few of them were. One of which netted me a really fat hen brown. She actually fought okay and took some drag. When she went in the net, you could tell she was a fatty. I forgot about how cold and windy it was out there when I had that fish in my hands. That was what I go up there for, for those moments. Those moments when you forget about everything. When the only thing that matters is catching fish (or trying to). I lost a few fish in this same spot. One was a huge colored up male steelhead that had to be in the 12 to 14 lb range. He took an orange crystal egg, then decided to show me who’s boss. The thing jumped about 2.5 feet out of the water, to show me what he looked like. Then he was gone. Snapped my 4x fluoro. He was in the air long enough to basically give me the middle finger and leave a vivid picture of what I missed.

One of the last spots we fished was one that seemed to produce a fish or two for some of the people we chatted with as we made our way upriver. As we were fishing this pool, we watched a spin guy hook a big steelhead and lose it right at the bank due to not having a net. Ouch. I’m not gonna lie, I was getting tired at this point. My back was aching, my feet were cold, and I wasn’t positive at the time, but I thought my waders were leaking (I am now positive). It was getting tougher and tougher to make every cast the cast. I kept fishing, though. Hard. Another one of those drifts turned out to be the drift. This was one of the most acrobatic fights I’ve ever seen. As soon as he was hooked, the fish ran and jumped hard directly at me. I had to run backwards and strip in line to keep the slack out. The fish was just all over the place. It must have went into the air about 5 times. When Jordan slid him into the net, and it was picture time, I could tell why he was so pissed off. It looked like someone snagged this guy on the side and ripped some flesh out. I guess I’d be pissed if I felt a hook in my face, too.

Unfortunately, Jordan didn’t have the same kind of day that I was having. He fished hard all day only to lose one fish. The fishing was slow, and we didn’t hook a whole hell of a lot of them. There was some action to be had, though. We tried our hardest until the very last minute of daylight to get him into some steel. On his last cast of the day, he landed his first steelhead. Well, kind of. Although it was only 8 inches or so, his little steelhead smolt might some day be the New York record. He just won’t tell anybody how big it was when he caught it!

Here’s the big fatty brown I caught.

Another angle.

Leave it to me to catch a sucker at the Salmon River. I’ve never seen one this ugly before. It took a bright orange glo bug. It smelled like dead salmon.

The wife and I made the long drive out to Buffalo on Friday to do some steelhead fishing and some sight seeing. Saturday afternoon we put on our waders and hit one of the many creeks out there in Western New York. The water was very low and clear as could be. The bottom was all shale and where there was a good current — the smooth shale bottom was all you could see. The smooth shale was actually white in color making spotting fish very easy but getting them to take your flies was a whole different story. Saturday we spent exploring the creek and I finally found a huge pod of fish. The only problem was these fish were either under a downed tree or hiding under the roots of a tree on the bank. With the water being so clear 4x seemed to be the only thing that would get you some takes, however, they would bolt right back in their hide out in the blink of any eye. Saturday I hooked three fish but couldn’t land any.

Sunday we got back out on the same creek at about noon again for a few more hours of fishing. I went right back to the same spot from the day before and found there were actually even more fish held up in this spot than the day before. The weather was overcast and a bit colder and it seemed to help. The fish were much more willing to take our flies but landing them was still a whole different story. I hooked up to ten fish and landed only one! The one I did land was a nice fat 28 inch fish. My wife hooked up twice and although she didn’t land any she got to feel how hard these fish fight. I was very proud of her fishing ability. She had never indicator nymphed before but by the second day, she was roll casting her rig and mending like a champ. We had to pack things up and head home around 3:30 to make the LONG six hour drive home back to NJ but it was a great trip and I’d love to get back out there some day. Special thanks to my friend Dejon Hamann from www.troutlegend.com for pointing me in the right direction on what creek to fish.

These shale cliffs made for some sweet scenery.

Me leaning into one trying my hardest to keep it out of the tree roots.

If I could only land one I’m glad it was a good one.

Close up. I couldn’t even get my hand half way around this thing.

Tired eyes, bags full of gear, and a serious craving for big fish. That pretty much sums up everything we had with us when we arrived at the Day’s Inn, Oswego. Nick and I spent a couple of hours tying a few flies on a wobbly little table at the hotel in preparation for our day on the river. Neither one of us really said anything about it, but I know we were both wondering what the next day had in store for us. We got about 4 hours of sleep or so before it was time to go to work.

After eating the shitty donuts at the continental style breakfast we got geared up. It was about 20 degrees outside when we woke up. We thought it would be better to rig up in the hotel room rather than the river side. It didn’t take long before we were off. On the way to the river we discussed techniques and flies we’ve heard had been working in the past week. As the sun rose over the tree line, we knew what we needed to do (or we thought we did). We got to the parking spot, stepped out of the truck, and right then we knew all the planning and tying and waiting had come to an end. It was time to fish. Pure and simple.

We walked down the leaf covered path to the river. The first spot we had hoped to fish was already teaming with egg chucking gear holders. We decided to explore this section of the river a little bit, as neither one of us had ever been to this section before. As we were walking around and fishing what looked like fishy spots, we noticed all the gear wielding egg chuckers had left the perfect looking pool that we were eyeing when we first got down there. We decided, what the heck, lets give it a shot. We slowly worked our way from the tail of the pool, to the head, slowly drifting our flies, waiting for that first fish to oblige us. It didn’t take long, Nick had hooked into his first steelhead. Not only his first steelhead of the trip, but the first steelhead of his life. After a nice battle, Nick swung that fish directly into my leg, which I then promptly threw in my net. His goal was accomplished. I even managed a pretty damn good picture of his first steely, if I do say so myself. We fished the pool for a bit longer with no success and decided to move on.

Nick and I worked our way downstream from the pool, just trying to find what looked like good water with no people. A lot of the best looking spots were filled with fisherman. Guys chucking huge pyramid weights out there, using egg sacks and power bait. We did notice a few of them had fish on their stringers, but we decided it best to look for our own water. We found a deserted run that looked pretty decent. I decided to give it a test cast to see how deep it was. Bang. First lake run brown of the day. After a sluggish fight, I had this little fatty netted up, photographed, and back in the river. Nick went way down stream then came back up to fish the opposite side of the run I had just pulled my brown out of. Not 5 drifts and BANG. Another lake run brown. By the time we had the fish in the net and the picture taken, the whole crowd from the pool above had moved into our little run and we decided to go explore some more.

The rest of our day was really just spent fishing here and there, and trying to get more familiar with the section of river we were fishing. We didn’t have a hugely successful day, hell, I didn’t even land a steely. But it was still great. Oh, and I forgot to mention. My very last cast of the day netted me this decent 24 inch lake run male. To tell you the truth, I thought I had a steely on, until I felt the sluggish fight. I seriously said, god damnit, another brown. Nick was like, Dude, this thing is a fucking pig, are you serious? I couldn’t help but laugh. The drive home was fueled by energy drinks and talk of what had just transpired. I didn’t get into any chrome this go around, but it just gives me more drive to get back up there sometime soon. If you can deal with the people, the cold, and the smell of rotting salmon, it really is a great fishery. I can almost feel a suicide run to the Salmon River coming on as I type this.

Another picture of my decent lake run fish.

Nick and his first steelhead.

Nick’s lake run brown.

What an awesome day!

The wife and I decided to take a guided trip on the Salmon river this weekend with guide George O’Brian from Trophy-angler.com. The morning greeted us with a balmy 4 degree air temperature, and a water temp just barely above freezing. We got the drift boat in the water and anchored up in our fishing spot before first light even hit the water. As we were waiting for sunrise George shared with us the tips and tricks a first time steelhead angler needs to know.

As the light finally started to show over the horizon we noticed people crowding around the spot that we had staked for ourselves. We decided to move down river and secure a different spot on the river before the people crowded in there as well. George couldn’t have made a better decision. The first hour or so of fishing was really slow with only one hook up by me, but as the sun finally hit the water, the day long bite was on.

There had to be 100 steelhead directly in front of the spot George had chosen. Alicia promptly stuck 2 HUGE steelhead that she lost, but from that moment, we knew today was going to be special. George tied on a black flashback stonefly to my 4 lb tippet and I was into my second fish of the day by the 4th cast. Five minutes later we had the fish netted, and I had a newfound respect for these magnificent fish. Pound for pound steelhead have to be the hardest fighting freshwater fish a man can find. I can’t even begin to explain the kind of rod bending, drag ripping strength these fish possess. If you’ve never hooked into one of these beasts, you need to book your trip right now!

The whole day we didn’t have to move once, we were hooking fish left and right. Total for the day we hooked 17 fish, with me landing 4 and Alicia landing 2. Everyone around us were amazed at the day we were having, and even more amazed when they found out it was our first time. A new steelheader can expect to land 1 out of 5 fish hooked, we were looking like pros keeping our ratio better than 1 out of 3! Something has to be said for George’s coaching and amazing ability to keep his clients on fish. If it weren’t for him, I’m certain our day wouldn’t have even come close to the type of day we had today.

Although I couldn’t feel my feet, I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Days like today make a guy question why in the hell he would ever want to drive back home.

This is the fish from the video on the bottom of the page.

Alicia with the biggest fish of the trip. A 14 lb colored up male.

Alicia and George before we left for home. If you’re looking for a guided trip up in Pulaski, George is your guy. You couldn’t find a nicer more knowledgeable guide if you tried.