Salmon River Pilgrimage 12 October 2012

Steelhead...finally!

Bill midway down Meadow Run

           I left the Pentagon Thursday at 1000 and drove to Bill's house in Clayville, NY to hit the DSR on the Salmon Run. We left Bill's at 0400 grabbed a much needed cup of coffee & we were surprised when we arrived that there were relatively few cars at the DSR lot.  We readied and we started to walk at 0615.  It was cold, windy and rainy, we took the walk slowly so we wouldn't slip on the muddy trail or sweat-out our clothes during the 30 minute walk.  When we got to meadow run there was one guide (Lou) there with two 30ish men from NH.  They had staked out the prime spots at the top of the run.  We picked the next two positions in our normal area.  The river was running low @ 285 cfs and clear, leaves were in the water, but only fouling flies every 6 or 7 casts -- not a problem.  Bill rigged up a #8 bead-head black bugger on his 11' 8/9 wt swich rod, I started with a standard orange egg pattern below 8wtwf line with 6' of sink tip followed by 6 feet of leader then 11 lb tippet on a 10.5" 6/7 swich.  Bill hooked a salmon on his second cast and we knew we were in for a good day.  Things were initially slow for me as I wasn't in the productive slot 20 feet upstream and wasn't effectively swinging my fly with respect to depth.  Lots of fish were being caught and 50% of them were steelhead.  I ultimately changed to a short tippett 12-14 inches with two split shots at the leader/tippet knot and an orange beadhead on a yellow egg sack pattern.  I suspect that this put my fly about 6 inches off the bottom during the swing.  Once I figured it out, I began to hookup as quickly as anyone.  I hit many Salmon, but invariably, in my excitement would horse them putting too much tension on my tippet and they would break off.  I brought two to the shore, but we couldn't get our hands on them. Next year we bring a landing net!  Bill continued to be productive through the morning and we landed several of his kings and a steelhead as well. Mid morning I walked down to the school bus hole, but there was so little water on that (north) side of the island that fish couldn't come up the side channel.  Returning to Meadow run I fished the bottom of the pool hooked and fought 2 salmon and one steel head but could not land them.  I regained my position one spot up run  from Bill and began to have action pretty consistently.  I FINALLY relaxed, let the rod and reel handle the fish and landed a gorgeous steelhead with Bills help.  She was probably 24 inches, silvery, solid and strong, a great fighter. We ended the day exhausted but happy!  On the way home we stopped at the Altmar Salmon Hatchery...very interesting watching the mature fish climb the ladders en-route to their home stream (hatchery) to be farmed for their eggs and milt. We stopped and had a great Italian dinner on the way home in Oneida. We missed Fritz and hope that he Paul and Jacob might be around next year to fish the run.