Salmon River update October 22, 2012 - steelhead report

I have fished the river over the past week from both Altmar to Pineville and Pineville to 2A.  There are steelhead in good numbers through out both these areas.  Not big numbers, but good numbers.  Most of the fish we have hit are chrome, fresh fish.  It has been nice also to find very little pressure on the river (the areas I fish with clients) which make it nice.  This will change.  Within the next week or two as the numbers if steelhead increase and word gets around, the river will become crowded, especially the upper areas around Altmar and Pineville.

Finding steelhead right now is easy, fish the fastwater and pockets with good current.  The last few outings have produced action using orange egg sacs and egg pattern flies like Sucker Spawn, Glo- bugs or Nuke eggs.    

One problem on going right now is the leaf hatch that has made it near to impossible, at times, to get through a drift.  There are still a lot of leaves on the trees around the river yet to fall.  We need a couple days of high wind and hard rains.

The river is flowing at 335cfs release and at the Pineville gauge the reading is 489cfs as I post this.  If we get no substantial rain this will continue to drop.

The salmon have disappeared very fast over the last week.  Any left are either late runners or on death's door.

I'll be on the river steady over the next few months so will keep you posted.

Tight lines.

Salmon River - October 18, 2012

Just a short note.  The release has been increased to 335cfs, same release as last year this time.  Right now the gauge at Pineville is 495cfs. This should go up even more by tomorrow as there is steady rain in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow.  Been floating a few time with the 285cfs and rain run-off, but a little rough.  Now it's going to seem like a float on the Snake River with all this water.

As for fishing.  There are still some salmon in the river.  The spawning activity and numbers of fish are starting to drop off noticably.  On the other hand the numbers of steelhead are increasing noticably.  That's what we like.  For steelhead I'd suggest egg patterns, egg patterns, egg patterns... oh yes, and egg patterns.

Will post more during the weekend.

Tight lines.

Salmon River report - as good as it gets

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.

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.



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.