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.
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Chris Michels. Just a fisherman.
Nick Naclerio. Just a fisherman, too.
Jordan Ewing. The fishing photographer. 
