Salmon River Holding Strong

True to form for the month of October, salmon fishing is starting to fire up all along the lake shore. Despite the low water flows, Chinook salmon are starting to show up in a few of the Western New York tributaries. Both the Genesee River and Oak Orchard River have received good runs of salmon.

I am still fishing the Salmon River, and will be until the end of the month. The salmon run is still holding up. We have seen some slow-down in the run activity. One day the run is all out and the next day, very little to no movement. There is so many salmon in the river that it doesn’t matter. We are still getting all the action we want.

Despite the low waters salmon are making their way through the entire river system and have even reached the upper fly fishing zone. (Note: the lower fly fishing zone still remains closed.) We are seeing a fair amount of steelhead recently in the lower river. I will be concentrating my efforts more on steelhead over the coming days, and the way the conditions are looking, I think my biggest challenge will be fishing around all the salmon.

Over the past week the Salmon River watershed received a little more rainfall. However the ground is still extremely dry. I do not anticipate a change in water flow yet. We still need a lot more rainfall to get us out of this intense drought. The river water flow is still holding at 185 CFS. Obviously the fish do not mind this water flow. The upcoming weather forecast is for cooler weather and a little more rain. Every bit helps.

We're still having good success dead drifting and swinging woolly buggers in a variety of colors and sizes. We have been working between three colors, black/silver, brown/copper and olive. When fishing in low light conditions, the darker colors are working the best. In bright sunny conditions olive woolly buggers have been devastating. Depending on the day and the mood of the fish, the size will very between a size 4 and a size 6. We have been constantly experimenting throughout the day, to see which combination of fly size and color will be the best producers.

For the Chinook salmon it is now prime spawning time and the river bottom is quickly filling up with eggs. With the huge run of salmon we are experiencing this fall, we are going to have a big egg bite.  Obviously we are now using a lot more egg patterns. As of now we are primarily using size 8 nuclear roe bugs. We have been recently having our best success with the color orange but I suspect the number of eggs lying around the color Oregon Cheese will become my hot color soon.

Note:

I have only one date available for  fall fishing on the Salmon River: October 27^th. The following November dates will be fishing the Western New York tributaries for Lake run Brown trout and steelhead:
November 7,23,24,25,27,28,29,30.
Please feel free to call the fly shop and talk to Carl. The number is 585-352-4775 or my cell at 585-233-0436