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Slava Voloshin with one of many kings he and
his party hooked into this past Saturday. |
The title says it all. Here on the Salmon River in New York the salmon fishing is in a realm of it's own. In 24 years working as a guide here I have seen a lot of salmon in the river but nothing like this. I have been guiding from the bank so far due to the low water but Tuesday I had one client so decided to float from Pineville to 2A. It was amazing to see how many salmon there actually are thru that stretch of river. Also amazing was how much of the river was void of anglers. I am sure we fished to salmon that had not been fished to that day. The heaviest concentration was in the Upper Sportsman area, literally hundreds of fish covering the river bottom. I'd bet money that every square foot of the area was being used for spawning. All those fish in an area about 800 yards long by 40 yards wide and only about 40 anglers, amazing.
The water level is still low despite some rain nearly every day. However the rain is scattered and does not really amount to much even as far as run off from Orwell and Trout Brook go. At Pineville as I type the gauge is at 241cfs. There was a release last night from 8pm to 12 midnight, I'd guess primarily to pull more salmon to the hatchery. Looks as if they'll release again on the same schedule tonight.
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Here's a nice female King landed by Bob Renauld
on Tuesday morning. |
The salmon are very territorial, no doubt due to the huge numbers of fish, so I have found them to be very aggressive on the flies. We are fishing weighted flies, copper bead and tungsten cones, with the most attention being given to a
Krystal Hackle body in
Fushia color with a hot pink strip of rabbit forming a tail and back (looks like a leech) with a copper 3/16 oz. bead head. This same pattern in
Chartruese work well too.
We can expect the run to continue for a little while longer into October. As of this past weekend there have been decent numbers of steelhead showing up in the salmon run. During Tuesday's float from Pineville to 2A we fished an indicator for steelhead but no takers, although we did see some steelhead in a few areas.
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Another dandy King landed on Tuesdays float.
Good job Bob. |
If you have any opportunity to get up here to fish do it. You will be amazed at the numbers of salmon in the river. Don't miss this opportunity to see first hand something truely amazing.
Tight lines.
