Steelhead round 2, November 2011

November 16, 2011

The plan was to do another birthday steelhead trip with my best friend Diego for his birthday.  I was just recently his best man in Michigan this past summer.  We hadn't had a chance to do a hardcore trip together since, or really fish together since our "battle in the woods", salmon fishing on the Pere Marquette.  We caught a case of salmon fever that trip and hadn't really had a chance to cure it.  Most of our trips in Michigan were cut short due to chores and wedding duties.  The salmon in that river beat us up so bad that we needed redemption.   Redemption would come in the form of a high flying acrobatic steelhead.  We just were not sure exactly where to go.  Fish the Lake Erie tributaries or Lake Ontario?  With there being no water in Erie, we decided at the last possible second while on the highway to fish the Salmon River in Pulaski, NY because of the minimum base flow of 335cfs in this river.  But we knew crowds could be an issue as this is probably the most popular Salmon/steelhead fishery on the planet.  Except this time of year, most of the salmon snaggers have gone home and the river is over run with actual fishermen... for the most part. 

We  Fished Sunday (11/13-11/16) afternoon through Tuesday afternoon from the bottom of the river to the top.  We floated mid river the first afternoon and immediately got into small steelhead, like 16 inches small.  Not the super dinks but not a typical 3 year old either or two year old for that matter. Then hit some decent fish in the 20 inch category.  Got beat up by one or two biguns, mostly throwing beads on fly rods as it out fished egg sacks under floats on noodle rods.  Crowds were terrible near Pineville, never seen anything like it down there, even during peak salmon season. We first looked around Altmar and just laughed.  Even for a Sunday afternoon it was insane.  The Pineville parking lot was just about full!    But once we floated past the bridge trolls and short walkers, it was wide open. 

We decided to hit the DSR all day on Monday.  Started in the upper DSR, we were the first people there but later had people immediately below us and right on top of us when the rest of the river was wide open.  I had to say something about getting up late and expecting to fish over top of me.  I said to myself the next person who walks in this tailout is getting an earful.  Well, the next one did and I let him know about his rudeness.  I've been fishing that river since a young kid and learned long ago you sometimes have to stick up for yourself.  Some of the enchroachers got the idea, other’s didn’t so we worked further up stream finding a prime pool deserted and all to ourselves.  Again, small steelhead.  Like 16-20 inches.  A 20 inch trout is an awesome fish no matter where you are, still took plenty of drag, acrobats like you wouldn’t believe but not the slammer 4 year old 30 inch fish I was hoping for.  There was an unbelievable number of small steelhead around.  A lot of those 12 inch fish, silver as can be and a lot of those 16-20 inch fish too.  Most of these fish were caught on blue egg sacks under floats in the heads of the pools or the extreme tailouts still considered fast water. 

Here's your typical smaller silver bullet. We caught mostly fish this size and smaller which were not quite picture worthy but are still full of piss and vinegar. 

I later worked down the smaller of the two braids in the river and worked a favorite stretch of water with floats and egg sacks.  Nothing.  Then switched to the fly rod with a white bead and one of the first casts hooked the behemoth I was after that took me for a ride.  You wouldn't believe what I had to do to land it.  I wasn’t in the greatest position to land a fish and had to do some rock hopping, tree ducking and sprinting to catch up to the fish but it finally happened.  Mission accomplished. I can die a happy man now. 

Later that afternoon we took the kayak up from the estuary to access the harder to reach water.  Figuring we would get an extra half hour of fishing if we didn’t have to walk back to the parking lot by 5pm.  We hit the first few pools in the estuary.  Quite a few guys for this late in the game but jam packed with fish proposing and jumping everywhere and they were ALL steelhead.  A very friendly group of guys too who half took a boat up and the other half walked down from the top. They immediately invited us to join them even though it looked filled to capacity to me.  But the numbers of fish were unbelievable, the estuary was like salmon season except they were all steelhead.  However, they didn’t want to cooperate at first. Or at least not for us as others were hooking up. 

So we hit some fast water upstream in a perfect looking section.  Maybe two feet deep, maybe less.  The perfect holding water for steelhead when the water temperatures are still not too cold, i.e the upper 40’s.  The perfect water temperature for the most insane runs, and fights.  More like all out brawls.  God I love steelhead.  This section had it all,  Perfect gravel, cobble, the perfect lie to intercept the bounty of salmon eggs.  Plus I had it all to myself.  My friend chose not to follow me across the river, even after I phoned him to say he had to cross to fish this area properly and I was on fish.  Blue beads were getting annihilated.  They were hitting them so hard they were literally running off with them.  Sometimes it would happen seconds after the bead hit the water on an upstream cast and this rocket would explode out of no where to grab the bead and dart back to its lie. Other times they would intercept it on the end of the swing like spey fishing and almost pull the rod out of your hands while fishing one BB shot under and indicator.  Insane action for that last hour of light.  Landing percentage was terrible though. But again, many, many small steelhead.  Maybe a few made that 20 inch size.  Even some of the jacks, like the 12 inchers were colored up and no they were not rainbows.  However I did hook an enormous rainbow that I almost landed but didn’t and landed a handful of 20 inch silver bullets.  My best friend Diego joined me from across the run/riffle and hooked up almost immediately but was having trouble landing them as that side offers little area to beach the fish.  I was across from him carrying the only net.  So he left for more favorable landing water and missed the evening flurry of hookups. Sorry dude.  I was later joined by two respectable fishermen who shared the run with after asking if it was okay.  Definitely some gentlemen fishermen in the DSR besides the guides and the few a holes up river.  On the way out we just had to cast at the pool that has been off limits since September and would you believe it but I caught a king.  First I hooked up with a steelhead on an egg sack.  He was head shaking violently, jumping, kart wheeling, but then the hook popped out and I was left with a different, heavier, slower bull dog fight.  The hooked pulled from a steelhead and into a big fresh king.  It was snagged unfortunately but I still landed it.  Fresh looking king in mid November!? You don't see that very often. Cool.   We did see a few active spawning beds in the DSR too by the way. 

Final day, I need to get a fish landed for my best friend and we need to hit the road at noon according to him.  So the lower fly zone it was.  We entered about 6am on a Tuesday, not many people yet but some preferred spots had people with lanterns, lawn chairs just staking them out.  No big deal, I like fast water/riffle/run fishing.  We had a whole side all to ourselves and from what I saw we out fished just about every other person there who were mostly  throwing long leaders/tippets and lots of weight.  However it was good to see some guys fishing indicators and much less weight.  We rigged beads above nymphs under indicators and one or two BB or BB2 Shot 8 to 18 inches from the fly and had non stop action all morning long.  Even had a double.  Many, many small steelhead again, like that 20 inch category.  Very few fresh fish, almost all had some color, some had fight, others did not.  We did get into a few absolutely massive fish that I could have sworn were kings except they were silver.  Didn’t stand a prayer landing them.  Salmon eggs were everywhere in the gravel.  Thousands of them.  They looked white/yellow, 7mm maybe.  Guess what, 8mm white bead above a prince or stonefly nymph did the trick.  Not sure if they were going for the bead or the nymph, my guess is the bead.  I couldn’t keep track of numbers too well but I’d say we were both well into double digits as far as hook ups and possibly landings as well.  The few fresh fish I did catch were again, small but fresher is always better.  However, not to knock the old horses as many of them were full of spunk too.  Noon quickly turned into 1:30pm so at least I got another hour and a half out of my friend.  The look on his face when he was hooking all those fish was priceless.  Till next time. 

You know you are doing well when you both land a fish at the same time.  That's a memory that will last a while.  Mine's the bigger one btw.  HAAHHA

A nice brown showed up to the party too.  Diego's best brown trout.  Even though we have browns this size in Maryland, I'll take them when we can get them.  Diego was thrilled with this fish even though it fought like a wet rag. Sorry but they just aren't steelhead.

Your typical upper river steelhead.  We lost more than  few that were twice this size.  It's always better to have played and lost than never to have played at all. 

We stayed at the steelhead lodge which was fantastic this time. We stayed in the main lodge, we each got our own room with a double bed, excellent soup and hospitality. It was good meeting pinrod, and smokequeen. Thanks for the info guys. It’s always good to talk fishing with real fisherman and woman. Let’s do it again sometime. 



As I sit here and write this the conditions are about as prime as can be for most of the Erie and lake Ontario tributaries.  The rain the last few days did the trick.  The time is now. This next week will offer epic steelhead action on just about any drainage ditch in the great lake's water shed. It's a great time of year. Too bad life got in the way and I couldn't just turn into a steelhead.