I can hardly believe that it is nearing the end of the first week of August. Time is in fast-forward it seems and I suddenly realized that we will probably have salmon starting up the river with in a few weeks. I began to think of that when I looked at the full moon last week and figured out that the 2nd full moon from now and the river will be full of salmon. I have a few things to do on the drift boat and my salmon fly boxes are near empty, but other than that, should be ready come mid-September.
This summer has been busy around the house, probably one reason time has been passing me by. I have had various fishing opportunities, both local and afar. I had the chance to fish with a fellow guide and good friend, Jeff Church, about 2 weeks ago on the East Branch of the Delaware River. We floated a beautiful section in the upper end and had a great day together. The fishing was a bit slow, but we gave it our best. We fished streamers for about 4 hours till the bugs started to bring fish up. There were a few Iso' and BWO but the majority of flies were Sulfurs in sizes 14-20, figuring out what the trout wanted was the challenge.
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| Largemouth on a black w/blue flake senko. |
Last week end another friend came in from out of town so we took the drift boat up to the Salmon River reservoir and did some bass fishing, it was awesome. We didn't catch any over a pound and a half but both the largemouth and smallies were cooperative. We had best results fishing a 4" senko, black with blue flakes, rigged on a flick-shake jig head and cast into openings in the weed beds and working it from shore to deep water on rocky points. I did pull a few in on a 3/8 ounce spinner bait, white and chartreuse spinning silver willow leaf blades. In a couple hours fishing we managed about 2 dozen green and brown bass.
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| Smallie on the same rig. |
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| Smallie on a spinner bait. |
Local stream fishing has been fair. Not a lot of bug action this year but if you hang out till dusk/dark there is a fairly decent spinner fall right now that gets the trout on the fly. Nothing fancy about the spinner, cream colored poly-wing in a size 14 is working well, again it's a dusk/dark deal. Prior to the spinner fall I have been using a soft-hackle wet fly with a PT nymph size 14 on the dropper with pretty good success. The PT gets most of the action but the ones that take the soft hackle are crushing them. That too is a lot of fun.
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| Standard issue trout with a PT nymph in the lip. |
The nights are cooler now with temps in the mid-50. Today was mid-70 and low humidity, the sun shone with high altitude clouds, it just feels like salmon fishing weather. Last year was a not so good salmon year but that was last year, for sure this year will be different. I am looking forward to it as are others.
One last photo before I sign off. This was on a tailgate I saw in the Pineville parking lot this past April. I downloaded some pictures from the boat camera and had completely forgotten about it, but it's pretty cool.
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| This fellow has been fishing out west, I'd bet Money on it. |
See you on the river.
Tight lines
