Starting with Western New
York, We have finally had enough Snow and rain to at least temporarily raise,
the water flows in all our rivers and creeks. Hopefully we will see a late run
of Brown trout and an early run of winter steelhead. This would make for a nice
mixed bag of fish. This has been challenging week, with cold weather, wildly
fluctuating water flows and grumpy fish. Well, it is that time of year. There
is a lot going on with the fishing conditions this time of year. We need to
just dell with it, and think our way through a tough day of fishing. We now
have had A month of brown trout spawning in our rivers and creeks. This means
there are plenty of spawned out Brown trout looking for big bites of food. For
us this means two things, First the streamer fishing is definitely turning on.
The second consideration is that, the trout are now using more of the rivers.
The pool fishing is becoming more productive, more water to hunt through to
find a fish. For the productive flies, we are still using our favorite egg
flies. But now we are expanding our fly box to include A few woolly buggers in
colors of black, brown and white, plus a few white and gray streamers.
The Salmon River, water flows
have finally increased. Water flow
release at the damn is at 750 CFS plus run off. This will definitely freshen up
the fishing and keep the steelhead fishing at a good pace. Keep in mind I do
not expect the steelhead fishing to be overly easy. I have been rating the
fishing as above average to excellence but technically demanding. This means if
you know the river, the steelhead you will do just fine. As of now with the
winter weather starting to settle in and water temperatures dropping, the
steelheads are now moving into their winter water. This also means we need to
slow down our presentation. Both when using dead drifting techniques and
swinging techniques. For productive flies, with this increase in water flows, the
egg bite is going to be strong through this coming week. Stay with your
favorite egg flies and size 12 through 8 and in your favorite colors. Do not be
afraid to experiment with both fly size and color. Keep in mind that we did
have a light run of salmon this fall, as result there is not as many eggs in
the system. The swing fly has been more productive this fall than in years
past, Especially in the lower river. Both bunny style and intruder style flies
have been very productive. As always keep these styles of flies no larger than
3 ½ inches for best results.