Bob & Torrey's Excellent Adventure

[Nymphmeister]

Headed to upstate NY for 2 days to fish the Salmon River with my friend Bob Scalzo.

I'll let the pictures tell most of the story.

Plenty of cold weather & snow, isn't it pretty-




Domestic Rainbow from the first morning-


While Bob wandered downstream & out of sight, I fished up and tagged my first Steelie of the day, she just about kicked my ass-


As I kept working my way up, I found a normally popular pool unoccupied. Turns out it held the motherload of brown trout.
Some were in full spawning colors-


Some were boys...


...and some were girls-


Day 2 saw some ass-kicking, dished out by the Steelhead upon us. My landing ratio was 20%, unlike the previous day when I must have landed most of 'em. Check these rapids out where I was hooking them in a pocket, and you will understand:


Bob fishing just below "the pocket" where we hooked a bunch:


Some fish this trip were little-


Some were middle sized-


And some were bigger-


We caught them on:

Trout Beads-


Glo-Bugs-


Sucker Spawn-


And the "Lawyer Fly", aka the Egg Sucking Leech-


All in all, a great trip. Not too many fishermen out, I guess the cold weather & snow scared them away, combined with the river getting raised Monday night from 750cfs to 1,150cfs. Day one was at 750cfs, was just above freezing, and we hooked lots of browns & Steelhead. Day two was below freezing all day, and we worked harder for our fish in the higher water but managed to find success. The rapids we fished in was even heavier even than it looks in the pictures, I don't know how we managed to land any fish there, but we did. There were some epic battles there! Although I mostly fished 2x this trip, for the rapids I ended up beefing up my tippet to 1x Frog Hair fluoro, that stuff could tow a car.

Here is some more fish porn from the trip:










In addition to Domestic (Fall Spawning) Rainbows, Browns & Steelhead, we also caught resident stream trout (both browns & bows) as well as Atlantic Salmon Parr- they were all chowing on the Salmon & Brown trout eggs in the drift and had fat bellies. I'd love to hit a Salmon River Atlantic when they are all grown up, they can crack 20# in Lake Ontario.

Although a few of the "hot spots" we hoped to hit were occupied, we had an amazing amount of water to ourselves. We fished both in & out of the Fly Areas, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that with the regulation change in the Fly Fishing areas (no more running lines/slinkies/heavy weights- your fly line must now be propelling your cast, not the weight propelling your fly line), people were abiding by it and actually fishing for the Steelhead, unlike the normal unsporting BS I've seen in years past with people dredging the bottom with super heavy weights and sweeping their flies thru the fish with overly long distances between their weight and fly, and intentionally lining/foul-hooking/snagging the fish >. It seemed to have cleared the real Yahoos out of there. Hooray . I guess there really is hope for the future of this fishery. I was worried I would have trouble getting my flies down to the fish in the Fly Areas, but a single Dinsmore SSG shot was plenty to do the job, and I was able to roll cast & overhead cast it no prob, so I was good & legal. We found success with both indicators & "old school" no indicator short-line nymphing. Swinging Buggers was also effective at moments, and the hits were not too subtle with that method.

Steelhead runs have gotten heavy up there in the past couple seasons. Maybe it's the one Steelhead limit in place for a few years now, maybe its something else or a combination of things. In any case, it's sweet to see the fishing great up there again. I can't wait to go again, I think it's gonna be soon. I need my Steelhead fix. I guess the first step is admitting the problem, right?

[JUICE]

Awesome report Torrey, I'm going to go up on Sunday I think. I sure hope the crowds stay away.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a cool story!

[alanb_ct]

Torrey: very well done, thanks! Especially given that you had the Boga grip in one hand and the camera in your other, that's tricky! All beautiful fish and thanks for the specific pattern tips.

[TroutAholic]

Excellent pictures Torrey, and lots of really nice fish. Glad to see you had a good trip, I can't wait till I can free up the time to get up there and give it a go!

Steve

[BLACKGHOST1]

Great report and nice pics Torrey. Thanks for being so informative in your post. I'm glad you had a great trip. It makes me want to go back right now.

[Nymphmeister]

Yes we did have elbow room, which is amazing given that it is November and the river is full of fish. I guess the cold weather, snow & 50% increase in flow Monday night kept the wimps away . And going on weekdays helps a lot. If any of you are thinking about going up, don't think, just do it, you won't regret it. There are plenty of fish there, it's up to you to find & catch them though.

Oh, I forgot to mention how tough my partner in crime was- Bob fell in the water at 3PM the first day, right over his waders, but kept fishing right 'till dark and didn't even complain. Now that's tough, I would have run home crying. I cannot stand falling in when the weather is nice, forget air temps in hovering around the freezing mark & water temps in the upper 30's.

[Dave]

Wow, awesome picture/report essay Torrey, or should we say Great Lakes-Meister! Pictures are beautiful and really capture some phenomenal fall coloration on the browns. I love that "buttery" Great Lakes color in the belly region. There's nothing more I like hearing than a report that uses a variety of flies, combined with techniques, and locations to get all types of fish.

Concerning your flies, were there any colors that were particularly effective, or did that change from hour to hour, or from day to day?

I still don't think those beads work, but thanks for trying to sell them on us.

That smaller brown, is that a clown fly in the mouth? Looks big for a globug.

[Nymphmeister]

Dave-

Oregon Cheese was the best color overall for me. Pink was good in low light conditions (end of the day). Two-tone Sucker Spawn in orange/yellow was good too.

Not a Clown Egg, just a medium sized Glo-Bug in a small trout's mouth.

As far as the Trout Beads, I still haven't fished them enough to have strong opinions, but friends that have swear by them. On 18 Mile Creek at Bert Dam, they outfished flies by such a big margin it wasn't funny. And the water was high & murky, you wouldn't have thought they would have offered much of an advantage- but they did. It was the difference between almost nothing and a fish on every 10 minutes. I know Aaron swears by them on the Salmon River, I don't have enough experience there with them, but they are getting popular there.

[Brookie]

ditto as to all of the above replies... Did you yell FISH ON! when you had that nice chromer on? LOL

[caddis]

nice. were they on gravel bars? you line most of them? Is euro nymphing the tech? can I fish with you? please?