Salmon River, New York

Well it's that time to provide an update on fishing the Salmon River last week. How was the weather? It was absolutely beautiful! Warm breezes, clear blue skies, sunny days, short-sleeves, shorts, and no hot waders to wear you down. This also meant very few fish and fishermen! I'd bought a new set of waders at Cabella's and did not wear them on our trip to the Manistee. Looked like I could keep them packed up at Pulaski as well but I did put them on over
shorts... Tried the lower fly zone on Monday and did get some practice in. There were a few salmon in the area and a person above Mike and me did hook into a beautiful steelhead but that was about it. Went to the upper fly zone on Tuesday where the fish were of a higher concentration. Fished below the big pool area between two sets of rapids. Here the water was moving slow enough for us to drift egg sucking leeches through the 4 to 6 feet of black water.
Shortly after starting our drifts Mike had a small 10-12 lb king on! It was an
exciting time as the salmon ran up river then bull-dogged deep under the current,
then ran downstream and back and forth. Mike was putting a lot of side
pressure on to wear out this bright fish and slowly the fish responded to the rod's direction. I tailed the fish, took the leech out of its mouth, pictures were
taken and the sweet smell of fresh salmon perfume replaced the hint of
"skunk" odor that had previously been in the air. Ah yes, another beautiful day and it wasn't much past 8am!

The rest of the day was hooking into explosive huge fish - mean and meaner.
One after another we had fish on and then off... Many were foul hooked but
some were fair. Some went upstream, some down, many back and forth as well as exploding aerobatics out of the water. All left us with adrenalin rushes and big smiles.

Wednesday and Thursday were fishing with guide Larry Rummel of MRO. Larry had suggested we try the upper fly zone which we did with success. He was concerend with the lack of fish in the salmon river as were all fishermen. We've all had those trips where we've put in our time but with limited success and that appeared to be our forecast. Oh well... that's why it's called fishing rather than catching...

We reached Larry's spot, were placed in the proper fishing positions and began casting. I was in the water about 1 minute before Mike and had a fish on after my 3rd cast. Mike had one on after his first! A DOUBLE!!!! Both kings and both fair hooked! And both in the camera! The fishing was concentrated to early activity then long periods of nothing followed by a stray fish here and there. We could look up and down the river at others we had no activity at all. We left at 10 am and returned at 2pm. The last cast of the day ( around 6:15 pm) Mike had one more for the camera - a big fresh male.

Thursday was almost a repeat of Wednesday - concentrated fish early but sporatic activity later. There was a very significant difference. Mike's first fish on was a once-in-a- lifetime type fish. It was a beautiful steelhead in the 20 lb plus class. Wow... When it came out of the water you were in awe... beautiful colors and what strength! And then it was gone... His 2nd fish was also a steelhead of about 12-14 lbs that made it to the camera. Can a fishing trip get any better? Each of us was into salmon but they were too shy (and mean) to have any pictures taken! We had gone through our supply of egg sucking leeches and tried using weighted variations or wooley buggers that modeled the Larry Rummel specials.

For those of you thinking about fishing the salmon river I'd suggest unweighted egg sucking leeches (size 6/8/10s) and exact copies of Larry's wooley bugger supplemented by egg patterns. I'd also suggest going a week ot two later than this trip unless you enjoy the solitude of long stretches of peace and quiet on beautiful waters. Now that I think about it, I may go back at the same time next year...