Sorry it's been so long since last post. Guide work is busy and 3:45 am wake up the last 2 weeks has left me a little tired. But here's what's happening as of yesterdays float trip.
There is no lack of fish but most of the fish are located above the Sportsman's hole to Altmar. Below the Sportsman's yesterday was slim pickin's. The word I got below the 2A bridge sounded like there were a few salmon moving up, but no large numbers. Sunday, Sept 25, I saw the first spawning activity this fall and in the week and 1/2 since the salmon are spawning full bore, beds everywhere you'd expect them to be. There has been little rain here so water is still low, 426cfs at pineville. This means that spawning salmon feel are vulnerable AND shy. I've been using #10 florocarbon to at least get near the fish. We're having some cooler temps so I'd expect the water to continue to cool down, it has dropped temperature 10 degrees since this past weekend. This will translate into steady movement of fish into the river and we should see more steelhead entering now. Speaking of steelhead, we had our first one on for the season this past Saturday, didn't land it, but was nice to see chrome!
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| Tube fly patterns |
We've been using basically egg sucking leeches in both tradition fly and tube fly patterns. In the past few days, due to fishing pressure, the darker colors are producing better but at first light on bedded male salmon the bright colors work very good, till the sun (what sun ???) gets high. Here are some of the fly patterns I am using. I like hot beads!
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| On salmon fly hooks, I like the top left leech w/tungsten cone |
Salmon fishing will be good till about the third week of October. I will post again in a few days.
