Salmon River Day Three: The Steelhead

A friend of mine, Ed, who had spent the weekend grouse and woodcock hunting nearby joined me for a day of fishing Monday. Pictured is the beautiful spot we chose, and again we're on the river at dawn. The nice thing about this spot is that it is almost exclusively accessible from one side of the river. You can cross the river and there's a path on the other side, but it's hard to fish this spot from there. So it's scenic, you're just watching the river and the woods on the far side.

And on this day, the river in front of us looked like a salmon parade route. Fish after fish after fish, leaping and splashing their way up stream. Huge, grey, heavy Kings. Dark red, acrobatic Cohos. Some jumping along the far bank, some so close you get wet from the splash. Even a few in the shallow water behind us. A truly memorable spectacle. As I'm watching the salmonid fireworks, I look over and notice Ed's still tying a fly on, messing with weights, etc., and I've already been fishing for ten minutes. Just as I'm about to give him grief about that, he drops his line in the water to strip out some fly line, and sure enough he gets a fish. One cast. Truthfully, I don't think this fish knew he was hooked, he just muscled his way upstream, slow and steady. Fly line. Backing. The fish eventually broke off, but I was psyched Ed got to feel the strength of a big fish so early.

But the fishing slowed down and people started to clear out, leaving a really nice stretch of river to just a handful of anglers. I moved downstream to the end of the big, quiet pool we spent the morning, and started fishing some riffles. Standard stuff, a pair of salmon visible in the current. Smaller, lighter female, larger, darker male. Throw the fly upstream and drift it to them. No takers? let it drift out, you never know when a brown or steelhead might be hanging behind the salmon, waiting for a meal of eggs.

Sometimes when a salmon takes your fly, you think it's a snag. They're so heavy and can be quite still, you just tug until you feel it move, then the game is on. But when I drifted this fly past those salmon and hooked something behind them, it was instantly, most certainly, NOT a salmon. This was a steelhead, and a beauty. Ed and I both got several good looks at her as she, lightning fast, shot towards me into shallow water, then back across the river, always in different angles but always at the same velocity: Full. Every glimpse I got filled me with the feeling that I was truly privileged to be connected to such a cool and beautiful fish. I really, REALLY, wanted this one, and said so.

But it was not to be. I was ill equipped to land it. I didn't have the skill, and we didn't have a net. My heart was still racing as I reeled in the empty line, and when I pulled some fly line back out to re-rig it, I realized I had made a critical mistake that I will never make again. The drag was still set very high from a previous salmon fight. Slow and steady, you can use a good amount of drag in that situation. But the steelhead was super fast and athletic, and I needed to give her more line faster. Too much pressure, and the tippet broke. All of the sudden, those seminars at the fly fishing shows with names like "Playing and Landing Big Fish" are sounding pretty good to me. This was not a trophy fish, maybe 24", maybe a bit more. Maybe eight pounds, maybe ten. But it would have been my favorite by far, and I vow to be better prepared next time I encounter a fish that special.

Next time, I'll have better skills. And a net.

Salmon River Day Two: The Kings

When the Lake Ontario salmon come up through the Salmon River, the first couple miles are through the Douglaston Salmon Run, a privately-owned, fee-fishing area. I decided to try this on Saturday morning, maybe get lucky with a fresh run of salmon. Fewer people spread out over a greater distance than the previous day, so I was able to find a place by myself. If you've never stood in a swift, black river on a crisp, autumn morning waiting for the sun to come up, I recommend it.

I hooked a very strong fish on about my third cast but lost him quickly. A half dozen more passed me, heading upstream in short bursts of wild energy, throwing themselves up and forward towards one of two final destinations: a spawning bed or a smoke house. But by the time it was fully light out the fishing was slow and stayed that way so I headed back to the previous day's spot, where I finally hooked and landed a decent King Salmon. That's me, for some reason, seemingly playing air guitar with my catch. It's hard to land these fish when you're by yourself, I got this one sort of beached in a shallow area and a nearby angler helped me out and then snapped the picture for me.

It was rewarding, after spending ten minutes or so fighting a fish, to get to hold it. And finally getting a photo of a fish was a relief, so I broke for lunch.

Going in to the afternoon I was relaxed. If I didn't catch another fish I had already enjoyed myself thoroughly, fought several fish, landed two and photographed one. Anything more would be icing on the cake. Well the icing came fast and furious, as I found a great spot and started hooking big salmon left and right. And people around me were hooking up too, huge fish jumping and splashing everywhere, the sound like kids cannonballing into a pool one after the other. One fish I hooked not more than ten feet from where I was standing, he bolted across the river and took 90 feet of flyline and half my backing with him. Then he charged straight back to me. The immediate and unexpected slack in the line, coupled with my furious reeling to regain it, resulted in the backing getting tangled around the tip of my rod. This would instantly result in a shattered rod once the fish took up the slack, and that event was going to happen very quickly. So I put the reel-end of the rod down in the water behind me and quickly tried to free the rod tip before my hand became part of the equation and really ruined the rest of the weekend. Success! I got control of my equipment and the fish, and landed him in a nearby shallow cove with the help of a kid who had been watching the whole fiasco with interest and/or amusement.

My arms still burning from that one I flipped my fly into the water to rearrange some equipment and gather myself, and hooked up again. This one headed upstream and I waded upstream after it, chatting some nice guys along the way. Then the fish turns around and as I pass the same guys again it really dawns on me: these fish just have a plan, and I'm not part of it. That afternoon marked the first time my arms ever got really, really tired from fishing. My best half day of salmon fishing yet, could it get any better?

Salmon River Day One: The Coho

Saturday morning, it's chilly but comfortable and I arrive at the river a half hour before dawn. Just me and every other angler within a 400 mile radius. But I found a spot I liked in a catch and release, fly fishing only area. I should note that, although I am by no means an expert (this being my second salmon outing), this isn't the same as trout fishing. It would be nice to have the river all to myself of course, but this type of fishing is not really about relaxing in solitude. It is, to me, about heart pounding fun. It is to trout fishing what a roller coaster is to a drive in the country. And I picked the busiest weekend of the year to go on this ride.

It wasn't light for long before I hooked my first fish. Still a little dark out, I was unsure about chasing this fish through the water when she chose to head downstream. So I waited, hoped she would decide to come back and eventually I was rewarded. A female Coho Salmon. Small. In fact, it was the smallest salmon I saw all weekend. By a wide margin. But that's alright, the Cohos run smaller than the Kings and, after all, I had only been fishing for twenty minutes. There would be more, certainly. Right? In the half dark with cold hands, holding perhaps the smallest fish in a five mile radius, and tangled in my flyline as I always seem to be during the fish release process, I did not bother to take a photo.

The rest of the morning and the afternoon saw more fish hooked, but no more landed. The fights were a blast, though, and I definitely learn a little bit more with each battle. Plus, watching other anglers is a great way to see first hand what works and what doesn't work when it comes to landing Really Large Fish. And sometimes - often, in fact - a big fish heads downstream in big water, and you're simply not going to see him again, no matter who you are or what you do. It's a matter of physics.

So the first day is in the books. I didn't drown. I landed a fish and fought a half dozen more. The weather was beautiful, the beer was cold, my back ached. The lights go out but the river does not sleep. There be monsters in there, and I'll try again tomorrow.

Bad News for Birds

I don't know what's more impressive, the shotgun or the shooter. I do know this: breaking in to this guy's house is ill advised.

Salmon River Countdown

In four days I will head north to the Salmon River in New York to try and catch salmon, steelhead, big brown trout or any combination of those three. I've already started packing: 8-weight rod and reel, waders, studded boots, lucky hat, beer, cigars, advil, camera. A year ago I went for the first time and had some success, thanks to my friend Steve who brought me there and showed me how to catch - and land - fish that were larger than any fish I had ever seen, let alone hooked.

I caught only salmon last year. The serious anglers up there all want steelhead, and many of them don't like hooking into salmon because it takes a long time to land one and that's time that could be spent fishing for steelhead. Me? I think it will be quite a long time before I get tired of hooking a 25- or 30-pound Chinook and watching - and, more importantly, hearing - ninety feet of fly line leave my reel in a matter of seconds. That's fun. Something that surprised me about my previous trip there was how much fun it was to just watch other anglers catch and land fish. Something about seeing an 8-weight fly rod bent over in an upside down 'U,' accompanied by the sound of a screaming reel, whether it belongs to you or the guy next to you.

Less than two years ago I was bitten, badly, by the fly fishing bug. Sometimes I fish for smallmouth in the Shenandoah or Potomac Rivers. Sometimes for trout in small Maryland streams. And sometimes I take my 3-weight across the street to my neighbor's farm pond and fish for sunfish. The rods, the flies, the method, the gear are all different. But that moment when a fish has fallen for my clumsy antics and taken my fly, that tug of life at the end of the line, man, that just does NOT get old. When the life that's tugging the line, though, is the size of a medium sized dog, it goes off the Fun Meter.