It has been too long since my last update. Long days on the river have a tendency to do that. As many of you know the salmon fishing has been extremely poor. This has been a bit of a surprise to me, because I did expect a little better return from last year. But that’s how fishing goes, some years we have great runs and some years we do not. Welcome to the natural world, Mother Nature loves throwing curves at us. Even though we have had some wet weather, Water flows remain stable at 335 CFS release.

For now the salmon fishing is starting to wind down. There is a fair number of salmon in the upper river finishing up their spawning.  However do not be surprised to find some new arriving salmon mixed in. There’s still plenty time for a run or two of Chinook salmon to come in. Keep in mind for the most part the salmon are in rough shape.

At this point I am no longer looking for salmon, it is time to focus on steelhead. At least here everything appears to be relatively on schedule for now. This past week we started to see consistent runs of steelhead coming into the Douglaston Salmon Run. We will have to see of this pattern holds up over the next couple of weeks. We just went through a sharp cold front; it actually snowed for a day.  We had 9-degree temperature drop in less than 36 hours. You can imagine what that did to the fishing. How do you say shutdown. At this time of writing this update we are coming into a warming trend. With warming water temperatures And some wet weather we’re having at this time. We should know exactly what the steelhead-fishing picture is going to look like.

Productive flies; this week has been pink and purple Crystal buggers. Those two colors are favors for Coho Salmon. We are also using the standard earth tone colors, Black, brown, copper, olive wooly buggers. For steelhead the standard round of egg pattern is working just fine. Nuclear row bugs and eggbeaters in colors Orange yellow and pink are the top producers.

NOTE:

November dates 28,29,30 Open. This is Brown trout and steelhead fishing. Note; Rick Smith, many of you already know Rick, Will be available to do trips on the Salmon River and the surrounding Creek for steelhead.

December remains wide open, this can be an interesting month to fish with lots of opportunities and light fishing pressure.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me cell 585-233-0436

It has been another slow week for salmon fishing. The one shining day was right after a night of decent rainfall. The following morning there was a strong run of Coho Salmon coming through the DSR. This run lasted for most of the day, with a few Chinook salmon trickling in along with the Coho Salmon. As for the rest of the week, we are back to covering a lot of water in the lower river. However there has finally been enough salmon to make fishing in the fly zones productive. Right now there is decent numbers of fish holding in all the main pools in both fly zones. Even here with good numbers of salmon the fishing can be a little on and off. Once the salmon get to the upper river, they can become a bit moody. Often not willing to eat a fly, keep in mind, as they get closer to spawning time this behavior will change. We are still seeing a few steelheads moving, not too many but they are periodically showing up in the lower fly zone. It is getting closer to actual spotting time for salmon. I do suspect we will see bigger pulses of fish running this week. However it is very possible that the Cold water temperatures in the lake over the last two years could possibly delayed maturing of this Group of  salmon. Unfortunately I dropped my magic eight ball in the river and it’s not working at this time. We will have to wait until January to know the answer too this question.

Even though we received little over 2 inches of rain this past week water flows still remain a constant 335 CFS release. The reservoir is still very low and we could use some intense rain, both the reservoir and the fishing could use that.

Productive flies; this week has been pink and purple Crystal buggers. Those two colors are favors for Coho Salmon. We are also using the standard earth tone colors, Black, brown, copper, olive wooly buggers. Keep in mind it is more important to cover as much water efficiently as possible then the fly we are using at this time.  When there is just a few fish in the system, we need to fish through as much prime fish holding water as possible.

NOTE:

November dates 28,29,30 Open. This is Brown trout and steelhead fishing. Note; Rick Smith, many of you already know Rick, Will be available to do trips on the Salmon River and the surrounding Creek for steelhead.

December remains wide open, this can be an interesting month to fish with lots of opportunities and light fishing pressure.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me cell 585-233-0436