Notes
Really really nice out there on the trail this afternoon... setting sun, warm temps for this time of year. Felt poppy from the beginning. Most likely had a lot to do with the 3 days off prior to this run. The Salmon River trip was great. I would say the fishing was moderate and got better as the days went on. Greg Inglis and I left my house at 7:00 PM on Thursday night and drove for about 4 and a half hours to a pit stop on rt 90 west in NY. We tried to catch some shuteye and I think I got at least an hour of solid sleep. THis really helped the rest of the drive. We were able to wake up and keep heading on. The GPS was our navigation and it showed us at only like an hour to go so I figured we were making great time. The only thing was that we were headed the wrong way. When the GPS stopped us and said you have arrived at your destination we were really at Lake Oneida. Which was over an hour away from the SR. So I put it in high gear and flew the rest of the way on back roads in attempts to make up the lost time. We arrived at Fat Nancy’s at about 5:30am only about a half hour later than I wanted to be. We got our licenses and a few gear essentials and we were off to the upper fly. We wound up getting there in plenty of time before sunrise, but usually there are tons of cars already there. Today there was no one in either parking spot! It was crazy… I actually double checked the regulations to make sure that they didn’t switch something on us and it was no fishing or something. Everything looked good so we headed in. It was snowing and basically a whiteout as we walked in in the dark with headlamps on. Then we actually had thunder snow. Really surreal and almost dreamlike walking in on basically no sleep as well. We hunkered down in the paradise pool and had it all to ourselves. Sun comes up and we are not catching fish. So we move downriver and find a nice spot to cross just below the faster water below the tailout of the paradise pool. Then we fished up and down that side for the rest of the day. I am pretty sure that Greg landed his first fish, a steelie right near the end of that first day. I did not catch a fish but had a few on. The water was flowing at 425CFS the entire trip at the Pineville Gauge. This was the tricky part. There were lots of fish in there, they were just getting pounded by people and plus the weather was really nice like 50’s. We went back in the second day and Greg immediately hooked up in the bend run, below paradise with a nice steel. We landed it and got some nice pics. I headed up to Wire hole and caught a nice 25” Atlantic Salmon, who flew the coop before we could get a pic. I still was in need of a steelhead though. I hooked and lost a few more, and the day came to a tricky close. I was two days in with a half day left and hadn’t landed a steel yet. The next day would be different. After a few brews and a long night sleep, we got back into the upper fly for our last half day. I was feeling optimistic as I decided to lower my tippet size and go to fluorocarbon. Now I was using 4X floro with a 4X mono leader. Two splits and the fluorescent yellow sucker spawn. It would do the trick. I immediately hooked into 4 chromers and landed one silver bullet right in the bend run. Great start! I ventured upstream, but to no avail so I came right back down and that is where I finished my day. I went on to land a nice 25 inch male kyper brown and had on another 6 steelies that were screaming around. Greg landed a couple as well and lost one nice one that hit his egg on the swing in the paradise tailout. Cool stuff. Overall great trip and great weather. Will definitely want to get back out there again on Veterans day weekend.