This week has been a
transition week for the Salmon River. The end of an incredible salmon run, the
start of the steelhead run. Those of you who head the opportunity to fish the
salmon run with me, know exactly what I’m talking about. Massive numbers of
fish ran the river, and the Guide service salmon record was broken twice this
fall. Going in to this fall the previous record was 37 pounds. This fall we
landed a 38 ½ pound Chinook salmon in early September two weeks later we top
that fish with a 43 pound salmon. An incredible fish the size of which I
thought I would never see. As I said this is been an amazing salmon run. Now
the steelhead is starting to show up. Each day I am becoming more confident we
are going to have a decent to good run of steelhead. Earlier these fish were
incredibly crappy. However water temperatures finally cooled off, and I figured
it out their behavior and adjusted. Which is normally what happens with crappy
fish, we adapt to their behavior. For now most of the steelhead are still in
the lower to mid River. It will not take
long for these fish to start showing up in the upper river including the fly
zones. With the waterfalls that we had
this fall there was minimal spawning in the lower river. As a result when the
steelhead first come into the river they are not is dialed in on eggs. We are
experiencing some wonderful classic fishing with a swinging fly. I suspect for
the lower River this is going to be fishing this pattern for sometime to come.
Ones the fish get in the mid river they will become more keyed in eggs.
Productive flies; this week
the A lot of fun swing variations of small intruders in the lower river. Flies
are approximately 2 and half to 3 ½ inches long. I personally like to tie them
on plastic tubes, Colors are a mixes of pink, purple, black, white and olive.
Did find that pinks and purples were good early today colors, midday olives and
black worked excellent. For egg flies size 8 and 10 are working just fine. As
for the colors the standard Oregon cheese, orange and chartreuse, pink are working
just fine.
Note:
I also have dates available
for Rick, in November. For those of you do not know Rick Smith, He has been
working with me for over 10 years and is an excellent fly fisherman and Guide.
I have no doubt you will enjoy your day on the water with him. Rick will be
focusing on the Salmon River and the surrounding smaller rivers for the
steelhead fishing.
If you’re interested or have
any questions please feel free to give me a call. Cell 585-233-0436