Salmon fishing on the Salmon River for the past month has not been reflective of the last three years during the same period. The salmon run has been a slow, steady trickle of fish, not the blast of hundreds for days on end. They are moving in, most are wild fish, but the expectation of most early season anglers has been disappointing. However, the key word in that sentence is 'early season'. We are now into October and the salmon will be pushing into the river soon, as is normal for the Salmon River here is New York.
The hatchery ladders are filled with big salmon and the spawning areas are slowly filling with early runners. We have been slugging away at them from both boat and shore and we are having consistant success, granted not like the last few years were the early season waters were filled with epic numbers of salmon, but still consistantly bringing fish to the net daily.
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| Can make your life easier. |
Most salmon are being taken by my clients on flies swung throught the head and tail-outs of the runs. This type of fishing is targeting migrating salmon the switch rod has been working well. In the current water flows, 397cfs at the Pineville gauge with a release at 350cfs, we are setting up with weighted flies and useing a
Rio VersiLeader with a 5.6 IPS to get the job done. This is a nice set up as it eliminates the use of split shot and most anglers can pick up the slower casting rythm for hauling weighted flies and heavy leader quickly, as opposed to fighting the awkward and most of the time, frustrating cast associated with heaving split shot 30-40 ft.
We just past an anniversary here on the Salmon River. You may remember 4 years ago on October 1, 2010 the Salmon Rivers reached water levels over 20,000cfs. It is still mind boggling to look at the pictures of this. Every spring during run-off we typically hit the 8000-9000cfs flow, but 20000cfs, that's crazy water. A few pics to remember the day.
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| Short bridge in downtown Pulaski. |
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| Taken from the Altmar drift boat parking lot looking north. |
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Fishing at the Pineville drift boat ramp.
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As for the salmon run, it's October 3, 2014. The peak of the run is still ahead of us. The next full moon October 8th and traditionally the run will be in full force and getting better till the end of Columbus day week. This weekend looks to be promising as a cold front is moving in this evening and will be with us into early next week. Most importantly about this is the rain it is bringing with it. They will come, as they always do. See you on the river
Tight lines
