Back in the saddle
I know another dude here who needed a steelhead fix, bad. In fact, the two of us, along with the steelhead junkie mentioned in my previous post, trekked up to the Salmon River in the “Great Norf Cunntry a New York” on Halloween weekend and tangled with a few. But inside every steelhead-obsessed idiot is an even worse character: the masochist. Whether it be torrential rain or temperatures cold enough to freeze flesh on contact, there is some elemental extreme that is sufferable in pursuit of steelhead. Let it be known that I do call them steelhead even though they live in an overgrown bass pond (i.e. a Great Lake) and not the sea. I don’t care, these bastards will clean your clock when they’re fresh and still put a hurtin on an otherwise respectable angler even in the dead of winter.
And so it was that two nitwit tail-fin-chasin masochists set out on a fish hunt late on a Thursday afternoon that would last a long weekend and fill up some space on a digital camera’s memory card.
A week before we left, the weather forecast was grim: low 20s for highs, single digits for lows. This can be a good thing; the crowds dwindle even on weekends when the mercury drops below a point. But the downside was that the weather at home would hit at least the high 50s or even 60, and leaving that heat wave to be walking popsicles wasn’t so appealing. But as the days went by the outlook steadily improved until it looked like we’d be fishing in the balmy mid-30s.
Every fishing trip takes too long to get here, then passes before you have time to take it in. Our three-day whirlwind tour was no different, just that we didn’t get much time on the water our first day since we drove deep into the night and had to sleep. I did pick up a new two-handed stick our first day up, a TFO Deer Creek 5/6 spey, which was broken in on a 12-inch resident brown, incidentally the same fish that got the skunk off for the day.
Saturday and Sunday, I think half of PA and NJ joined us. The lots were packed, and so was the river. Still, knowing the area has its benefits - even if it means just sticking yourself in a spot that’s unoccupied. We met up with a couple friends from Buffalo and spread out along a productive stretch that stayed quiet for some time until around noon. I crossed the river and fished the soft inside seam of a deep trough that I’d scouted the previous day, promptly hooking a hot large chrome hen followed by a bottom-hugging post-spawn brown.
Finished up the day with another pair of steelhead, one a smaller buck that chowed down on a hot orange sucker spawn pattern:
and another big, bright female that crushed a dead-drifted bunny leech:
That tubby girl headed straight for the lake on a blistering run, finally coming to hand a full hundred yards downstream. So ended Day Two, and to my disgust, the Ravens couldn’t beat the Colts. WTF?
Day three and my man from RICtown is itchin for a fish. Seems like another slow day until this porky buck sucked down a rubber-legged crawbugger:
A few hours later and finally…FINALLY…my buddy’s hooked up with a real nice fish that hit an egg pattern on the dangle. Funny, that. We couldn’t buy but one hit from these jerks on swung flies the first day we fished there.
As soon as I walk back down to my gear, I’ll be durned if he’s not hooked up again, this time with a bright chubby gal:
He lets me get a few casts in, and kindly even lets me land my own fish before tangling with another looker.
Left as the sun slipped behind the trees and made a long, sometimes sketchy, and totally caffeine-fueled drive back to VA. All feesh were released quickly and unharmed.
