Ah, Steelhead

[Video via RogueAngels]

Spring Chrome

A few pics from last weekend’s jaunt upstate for some spring steelhead Lake Ontario trib fishing. All fish were released and are hopefully fattening up in the lake so I can catch them in the fall. Hopefully, they won’t be glowing, either.

High water – Salmon River @ 5000 cfs

Pulaski, New York’s Salmon River can be a temperamental flow. This year the water was really low through October. Now it is really high. Really high. At least the steelhead will go relatively unmolested for a week or so. That is, until I get there in early May and spook them all with my feeble attempts.

Here’s some great footage of the river @5000 cfs, a huge flow. Anyone who’s been on this water can see this footage is pretty extreme. The bridge at Altmar is particularly unsettling:

A Drink They Call Loneliness

There’s a nice article in this month’s Fly Fisherman magazine by Rick Kutich about trying to get away from the crowds to find Great Lakes steelhead. I’ve only fished Lake Ontario tributaries, which I’ve heard are some of the worst for crowds, but his article reminded me of a few days of fishing where I managed to find a little peace on a crowded river.

An Oswego County (N.Y.) guide told me once that those neat little “when to fish” charts that break down the season by week don’t apply to Great Lakes fishing. “The only thing you need is a weather report, that will tell you where and when to fish,” I remember him saying on a particularly dark morning.

Among Kutish’s tips are fishing after a river gets blown out, but before visibility completely returns, which he describes as: “When the water begins receding and visibility reaches a foot or two.” He even suggests fishing in chocolate milk conditions, while emphasizing the need for a dark fly presented in likely fish lies.

Avoiding weekends and fishing later in the day are two other tips he recommends that I can relate to.

The annual salmon run in Pulaski is a zoo, but I’ve had some nice evenings and late afternoons (especially on Sunday) after most anglers have left the water upon limiting out, heading home or just having enough.

I’d throw in one piece of advice that’s a bit risky but has a high reward. Heading out after slow (or even abysmal) fishing reports have circulated for a few days can get you on a less-crowded stream. With anadromous fish like salmon and steelhead, especially during peak run times (ugh, there’s those calendars again), the fishing can change hour to hour, day to day. Taking a chance when many other anglers are still waiting it out can find you on a stream loaded with fish. Throw bad weather into that mix and many anglers head home early or shy away altogether. I can remember casting flies with a few friends on one of the best sections of Pulaski’s Salmon River during the peak of the salmon run. It was freezing and the rain was coming down in buckets. We were the only ones in view for hundreds of yards. The fish were running and they were all ours.

There was also situation a few years back where two weeks of rain had elevated a particular river we were planning to fish in late fall to insane levels. Trips were being canceled by the dozen and the fishermen that did turn up looked dour, confused and, in some cases, even betrayed. When our guide called to cancel we begged him to give us a shot. There had to be a place where a fish or two could be coaxed. The guide was thinking, first, the fishing has sucked. Second, the river has been dangerous. And third, the fishing has sucked. After a half-hour of lobbying from my persuasive friend Len and myself, he relented to take us to a spot and show us what to do. “Sure,” he said, “but you’ll never land anything.”

We killed them that day. Our guide found a nice cut bank big enough for two fishermen that was loaded with fish moving upstream all day. Fish after fish were hooked and many were landed until we got tired. The handful of other anglers on the river were dumbfounded by our success.

The guide had a sheepish grin on all day.