12-17-23 Steelhead Trip
My battle with the Salmon River in New York continues. I don’t know what it is about the river, is it the size, is it the species of steelhead, or is it simply cause I suck at fishing? I don’t know but I’m trying my best to figure it out. I have had some epic days steelhead fishing on the river and some really shitty days, but I haven’t been able to understand why. Before I get into the chronicle from the past weekend’s trip, I want to quickly discuss the method of fishing I chose and why I avoid other tactics.
Also, it’s important to note that I don’t care what tactic anybody chooses, I strongly believe that everyone should fish however they like. For me, I love the challenge of figuring out a river and learning what gets those fish triggered to eat. The fact that I still haven’t figured out the steelhead on the salmon river is what drives me back to that damn place over and over again. Growing up near Pittsburgh, we did a lot of steelhead fishing in the Erie tribs and I am very confident in catching steelhead there, but the salmon river still has me beat.
I know from experience that adding a decent amount of weight to your rig, with about 4’ of tippet material below the weight and swinging flies across the current as you continue to bounce the bottom is an effective way to catch steelhead on the salmon river. If you want to see this effective technique in action, go to the lower fly zone and watch the anglers who consistently hook into fish on a much more frequent basis than anyone else. This will likely be their set up. I feel that this technique is effective at hooking into steelhead, but by lining the fish or flossing them, not because you earned that fish by tricking it to eat your fly with a great presentation.
Back to the fishing chronicles! I took two fly rods with me, one was the diamondback 10’10” 6 weight Ideal Nymph, the other was a 10’ 7 weight. Most of the time I stuck with the ideal nymph, but some sections of water were really big, for those sections I used an indicator and fished the 10’ 7 weight. I started out fishing an egg on the ideal nymph, I set this up just like I do for trout fishing except with a leader that is slightly “less micro.” I attached about 80’ of 7 pound sighter material to the end of my fly line and approximately 7 feet of 6lb tippet material to the sighter. I had a small split shot attached about 18 inches above the fly to help get it down a little quicker.
The first section I fished had a pretty strong current and a nice soft seam on the inside. It was about 3’ deep in that section so I started fishing there before moving out into the river. I switched flies a few times between eggs and nymph patterns without much success. I worked my way all the way out into the prime run and didn’t have a bite so I decided to move up about 10 yards and do it all again. It was only my 3rd cast in the new section when my sighter came to a stop, I set the hook and could feel the big head shakes through my rod. The fish went upstream and I got the battle onto the reel and felt very good about my hook set. I angled my rod lower and into the near bank to move the fish into the shallow water where I would be in a better position to win the battle. Unfortunately the low rod angle resulted in my line wrapping around a rock and the battle was over.
I tied on the same blue egg fly and continued to work the water in the same method as before, about an hour later the sighter made a quick hesitation and I set the hook and felt another good fish start to run. This time, the fish made one good run and popped the hook. Not sure exactly what I did wrong, but I got back to covering water, hoping to get another try.
I spent the rest of that day and the entire next day, fishing as hard as I possibly could without another bite. I fished the upper river, the middle river, the lower river and threw eggs, nymphs, streamers, but I couldn’t get another fish to eat. I guess that means I’m just going to go back again to get another ass kicking, hoping to eventually crack the code!