Salmon on the Sticks

*Please note: Night fishing during the salmon runs is only allowed in the short stretch from the last buoy, located between the breakwalls at Selkirk, to the mouth. (See page 30 in the NY Freshwater Fishing Guide for 2008-09, or page 38 in the 2009-10 guide).

Showing off a large king. Photo courtesty of Catch 22 Fishing Charters.

The most exciting time to catch salmon is at night. Problem is they don’t usually hit more than a half-hour or so after the sun goes down. In fact, Al Maxwell of Woody’s Tackle in Port Ontario says “September is about the only time of year when they hit after dark.”



You see, a king’s last September isn’t typical by any stretch. Indeed, in the autumn of its life the urge to spawn is foremost on its mind, driving it to act anything but normally.



I wanted to see for myself and called Captain Rick Miick, (315) 387-5920 late last week to learn what he knew about it. “We’re getting some fish by sitting (still-fishing) off the sticks,” he confirmed. I’m going out tonight with a couple friends. Wanna come?”



“You betcha’” I replied.



We launched at the Salmon River Lighthouse Marina; 315-298-6688) a little after sundown. Rick rowed out about 100 yards off the “long stick” (jetty with the red light) and dropped anchor. Our tackle consisted of some weight to get us to bottom and a floating egg sac to keep the offering waving a few inches above the sand.




“They usually come in a couple hours after sundown,” the captain explained. “The river’s colder than the lake and it draws them. The few fish that are ripe make their way to the hatchery. The majority are fresh and only get about as far as the Black Hole, then turn back for the lake in the morning.”




The still night was magical. The lake was asleep. Not a wave stirred. Above, a silent explosion of stars sparkled like fireworks. North along the shoreline, Brennan Beach RV Resort was lit up with what appeared to be Christmas decorations. Out on the lake, a few charter boats scurried about in the darkness. All around us sat numerous drift boats. The light sticks they attached to their rod tips as strike indicators glowed, making them look like menorahs.




About an hour into the night, a cacophony of spooky splashes surrounded us. For about ten minutes they were breaking the surface everywhere. Excited almost beyond control, we glued our eyes to the strike indicators and prepared for a fight in the night.




But nothing happened. The school must have swam under us and gone up river.




Some of the boats were luckier. While we couldn’t see anything, and no one whooped and hollered, the sound of a net handle scraping the bottom of a boat and a long spell of violent splashing at its side indicated a fish was being landed.




Soon afterwards, some boats started flatlining (row-trolling) with glo J Plugs. Photographic flashes, used to fire-up the lures, popped through the night.




Check the Great Lakes and Tributary Regulations section of the “NYS Freshwater Fishing Regulations Guide” for specific regulations.




This exciting bite starts winding down the last week of the month and all but stops by the beginning of October.




Late September’s nights are extremely black, and can get cold. But this sensory deprivation is what makes this the most intimate form of salmon fishing. Indeed, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen a king rising through glimmering moonlight, an arm’s reach away.

Comin’ Home

Fishermen at the black hole in Pulaski

Depending on how you look at it, salmon are the aquatic world’s luckiest or unluckiest fish. To a hedonist, their 3 ½-year feast, climaxing in a breeding orgy followed almost immediately by death, is perfect. On the other hand, from a traditional Western point of view, their lives are gluttonous, violent and licentious, not exactly the kind you’d want your children to lead. But they are what they are and there’s nothing else they can be. This month launches their final hurrah, a tortuous ascent up natal streams to spawn and die.

Like all wild beasts, salmon aren’t good at sticking to a schedule. Some run upriver as early as August, others wait until winter. This isn’t weirdness on their part, or anything like that; it’s nature’s way of protecting the species. You see, something can happen during the main runs, an earthquake, for instance, or even a volcanic eruption, and the early risers and late comers insure the survival of the species.

Keeping this in mind, I went up to the state salmon hatchery in Altmar the last weekend of August. Some salmon were in the river and a few were in Beaverdam Brook. A couple were even at the ladder, waiting for the gate to open and let them into the facility.

I went up again this past weekend and the fish were in the river heavier than I can ever remember for this time of year. They weren’t everywhere yet, mostly in the lower reaches; the staircase, for instance and the rapids between the Black Hole and Little Black Hole. Arriving around 3 p.m. and only staying until 5 p.m., I watched three fish, averaging roughly 20 pounds, landed—not bad for that late in the day.

It appears this summer’s cool, rainy weather kept the water in the lake from warming too much, allowing the ripe fish to come into shore earlier than normal. With the power company releasing a base flow sufficiently high to offer them easy access to the entire river, the fish stormed in.

Currently, they claim the whole stream. My contacts report seeing fish taken from Douglaston all the way to the Upper Fly Fishing Only Section.

Justin Schwalm, an employee at Fat Nancy’s Tackle Shop reports “I got on the river just before noon today (Tuesday) and saw hundreds of fish by the time I left at around 2 p.m. I saw about 50 guys fighting salmon, and losing the majority of the time. Most were getting them on egg sacks or blue sponge.”

And the fishing is bound to get better. Several guides report the kings are staged inshore near the river’s mouth in massive quantities each morning, just waiting for the biological signal to go off, propelling them into the river. Those that aren’t quite ripe enough yet are turned back into the lake by charter boats and the day’s warming temperatures, only to return that evening and try again.

This is the best time to get a fresh fish. In a couple more weeks they’ll start getting really dark, even black, showing signs that they’re close to the end of their life cycle.

The weather forecast calls for relatively mild nights and warm days, the perfect combination for drawing salmon into the river. It’s a good time to fish in the comfort of short sleeves, while dodging 20 +-pounders tearing upstream on their way home to spawn.

Bringing home a Salmon

Kayakers and fishermen sharing the staircase

The Salmon River’s Wild Side

Switchback along the trail to the gorge.

Like most streams in the North Country, the Salmon River has been tamed, its formerly boisterous rapids harnessed by two dams to create electricity. Oh sure, water still surges playfully out of the powerhouses’ tailraces, and in a few spots along its path to Lake Ontario, you could even call it whitewater. But its ancient character has changed utterly, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the prehistoric riverbed which forms a spellbinding gorge between the dams.



While the law requires the power company to release sufficient water to keep the last 13 miles flowing fast and deep enough for recreational purposes, the dam valves feeding this part of the river are barely open, releasing enough to allow the three-something-mile section of the upper river to flow creek-size. Mother Nature made this stretch the wildest, freest, most beautiful slice of the Salmon River.




It’s also the most difficult to access because there’s no trail system. Indeed, there are only three places where it’s relatively safe to get to the bank (see Getting There below). Once you’re down there, the going is slow--and you’ll want to wear hip boots with traction devices.



But the breathtaking scenery makes it all worthwhile. Sheer walls of stratified limestone rise 70 to 100 feet above the water. Polished over the millennium by scouring rapids, the riverbed’s long stretches of bumpy sheets of fractured bedrock are littered with flat stones, and punctuated at the bends by channels and pools. Native flowers and mixed hardwoods crop its islands and pebble beaches. Here and there, huge boulders, calved from the cliffs, rise out of pools like pagan monoliths to ancient gods.



One of the most common hallmarks of natural beauty is austerity. Indeed, wonders ranging from Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon aren’t exactly what you’d call ideal wildlife habitat. Some would even say they took the pain nature dished out and made it into a song.



The Upper Salmon River fits this category perfectly. But hidden in its nooks and crannies are delightful surprises: trout and smallmouth bass. They can be elusive however few and far between, and the challenge of catching one is what draws an occasional soul into this wonderland.



Smallies are native to the river and have been here since the beginning of time. The best spot for them is the plunge pool below the Salmon River Falls.



Rainbow trout are stocked into Lighthouse Hill Reservoir every year. Those that survive trout season and winter will run the river in spring to spawn. Fast water critters at heart, some stay until rising temperatures force them out, usually in June.



Browns, descendants of last century’s stocking programs, live in the river year-round. These are truly wild; the savviest of the savviest trout species.



Brookies find their way into the river from tiny brooks that drain into it, or into Lighthouse Hill Reservoir.



Progress may have slowed the Salmon River down. Its water all but squeezed out of it, it still runs, albeit much slower, narrower and shallower. It just goes to show, you can take a river out of the wilderness, but you can’t take the wilderness out of the river.



Getting There



Get there from Pulaski by taking NY 13 south. Turn left onto Co. Rte. 22 in the village of Altmar and continue for about 3.5 miles to Bennett Bridges. A fishing access site with parking is on the west side of the road, between the bridges.



To get to the Salmon River Falls Unique Area, continue on Co. Rte. 22 for another mile from Bennett Bridges. Turn right on Falls Road and continue for 1 ½ miles. The parking area is on the right. The footpath to the bottom of the gorge is open May through Nov. 15. The descent is 100 feet. Some areas of the gorge are restricted due to the sensitive environment of this area and visitors need to read and follow the instructions posted at the Falls.



To get to the old Dam Road Bridge access area, take Co. Rte. 22 to the edge of Bennett Bridges. Just before the first bridge, turn right onto Pipe Line Road. At the fork, bear left, slow down and keep your eyes peeled on the left for an old bridge. (The bridge is closed and declared unsafe for pedestrian or other uses so please avoid the temptation.)

View of the falls from the gorge.



Island flowers.

Paradise with a river running through it.

City Smallmouths

Captain Redsicker with a typical city smallmouth

Whenever serious talk turns to smallmouths, Lake Erie starts jumping off tongues like a bass on steroids. But there’s a lot of omission going on, especially if the conversation takes place in New York State. You see, Lake Ontario, the second deepest Great Lake, might not have the massive stretches of shallow habitats its next of kin on the other side of the Niagara River boasts, but what little it has is loaded with smallies.



I’ve had numerous memorable outings tackling these challenging beasts in Oswego’s territorial waters in the past and got the urge to go in late July, the beginning of the dog days of summer, a time that normally triggers a good smallie bite. I contacted Capt. Dick Redsicker, owner of Upstate Outfitters (315-298-4107), one of the few guides who specializes in bronzebacks.



“Ain’t much happening out there, yet,” he replied.



In the beginning of this month I called again.



“There’s a few around but not many. Call again next week.”



The urge to catch some smallies kept growing fiercer and fiercer as the days dragged on. Finally, on the 12th I called…Eureka!!!!



“I’ve been nailing ‘em all morning,” claimed Redsicker, “tallie’s 37 so far.



I even got a rock bass that would seriously challenge the state record. I released it…and boy, do I regret that now.” I made it to Wright’s Landing in about an hour. By then he had landed and released 51 smallmouths. “Nothing huge, but they were all fun,” he beamed.



Rounding the Lighthouse point, we headed for the western corner of the west wall and fished about 50 yards from shore, under the shadow of the steam plant’s towering twin smokestacks.



Something was blooming and it wasn’t the green shoots you read about in the financial press. It was more real, green/brown algae, I suspect. It streaked the surface like long, green hairs. When you ran through it with the motor, the water turned muddy brown.



Since neither of us is a scientist, we stopped talking about what we thought and went back to what we knew. Dick’s technique is about as simple as it gets. He threads a salty, smoke colored Bass Pro Shops tube on a ½-oz. jighead, tosses it over the side, lets it sink to bottom and just drifts along. When the wind kicked up a little, we used a sock to slow us down.



We got some hits; mostly short strikes. You could feel the fish pick up the tube by the hairs and just nibble. I got a couple solid hits, but when I set the hook…nothing. One of life’s greatest mysteries is how sometimes a fish can hit a lure--even crankbaits packing three treble hooks--and not get hooked. (If I did that, I’d have scars in my lips marking each time.)



After floating around for about an hour we pulled the lines in and headed further out, into water 50 feet deep. We went hitless for about an hour. Then Dick nailed a ¾-pound rock bass.



I nailed one next, about the same size.



A few minutes later, Dick nails a monster that went well over a pound. That in itself was worth the trip as far as I was concerned.



Fish started showing up on the graph but they wouldn’t hit. Dick began wondering out loud why he had such good luck earlier and not now. Just then, a fish nailed his tube and he brought a nice smallie aboard.



A few minutes later, we switched over to Berkley Gulp 3-inch Leeches.



The action picked up a bit and we nailed several smallies apiece, plus a few monstrous rock bass. I mean I’ve caught some big ones before, but seldom anything over a pound. We got several that day.



“Everything’s late this year,” Dick opined as we headed in. I bet ya September is gonna be hot.”



“I’m sure it will be,” I replied. “I’ll call ya the first week of the month…and the second…Oh, and I’ll bring the donuts and coffee.”

Capt. Redsicker and a trophy rock bass



Round Gobies, an exotic that's turninginto an important food source, grow big in Oswego too.

A bloom of some sort streaking the water like flowing hair.

Under the shadow of Oswego's towering smoke stacks

Rounding the lighthouse point

An Oswego still life: sailboat and smoke stacks...

Oneida Lake Mixed Bag

John Stanek with a nice Oneida Lake walleye.

This summer promises to go down as one that never came. Indeed, temperatures have been so mild and it's rained so frequently, it seems spring’s tour has been extended a few months while summer’s off looking for global warming somewhere.

Oneida Lake agrees; her fish are in closer than they normally are this time of year.

Having recently moved to the lake, I go fishing whenever I get the chance. Neighbor and old buddy Tom Gibson, and his friend Rob Douglas, who, incidentally, has a boat, challenged me to teach them some new techniques. We arranged to go last Tuesday. Tom’s buddy and seasoned angler, John Stanek, came along.

Rob’s boat isn’t set up for fishing. Without naval electronics or even a GPS on board, our trip wasn’t going to be a video game played on a fish finder’s monitor; instead it would be ol’ fashioned intuition and intelligence against the fish’s instincts and raw power.

We started out in 15 to 20 feet of water about a half mile north of Lakeport. An hour went by without a hit.

The wind was out of the southwest so we decided to head for Shackleton Point and drift the south shore, concentrating on weed beds in four to eight feet of water.

John was the first to score, nailing a juicy eight-inch perch on a worm.

The bite was slow, however, and Tom decided to tie on a generic spoon, something he got out of a bargain bin at Gander Mountain.

Right off the bat he nails a 14-inch walleye. His first.

(Beginner’s luck, I snickered under my breath).

A couple casts later, he hooks a smallie of about 13 inches. It jumped three feet out of the water, shook its head and spit the lure back at him like it was bad meat.

(The guy didn’t tell me he knew how to fish, I thought.)

A few more casts and Tom hooks a monster smallie. Like any respectable lunker, its first move was to jump, rising steadily, deliberately into the sky like a basketball player with fins.

(Talk about hang-time, I thought, jealousy sweeping over me like a blinding fog.)

That fish took Tom to all the terrifying places: weeds, under the boat, around the motor. Finally, it seemed to wrap its tail around a rock or something and settled into the tug-o-war bronzebacks are famous for.

After a really long time, the strategy imprinted into its genes over the ages paid off and the line went limp.

“That was cool,” was all Tom said, and kept on casting.

John changed over to a small silver spoon while no one was looking and before you know it, he hooks an 18-inch walleye. Like all “eyes” its size, it gave a respectable fight. But it wasn’t enough. John wrapped his hands around it and heaved it into the boat.

Boy, I was starting to look bad. Two guys catch fish and I don’t have squat. Rob being fishless, too, didn’t provide any solace because he wasn’t even fishing.

Right when inadequacy started gnawing at my confidence, the lake relents, giving me a hit. The smallie jumped several times, spitting bait all the while. He must’a ate a whole school because he kept regurgitating minnows, in groups of three, all the way to the boat.

This summer’s weird weather is bringing all kinds of changes to Oneida Lake. One that many will find surprising is that the walleyes are hitting silver spoons, something no one ever talks about.

Just goes to show…don’t get caught in a rut. Experiment.

Tom Gibson with an Oneida Lake walleye, his first.

John holding a chunky bronzeback as the boys look on.

Rob Douglas and best friend, Sidney.

Rob Douglas and a keeper smallie.

Fallfishin’ in Summer

Fallfish watching my every move

Oswego County offers the best man-made, fast water salmonid fishing in the Lower 48 States. But every now and then I get the urge for the wild side. Last Friday I felt the call and headed for Scriba Creek, hoping to tackle with one of the legendary wild browns the stream is said to harbor in the wilds north of Constantia.



A search of the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s website showed me there was a stretch with public fishing rights (see Getting There below). However, there wasn’t any public access off the shoulder. So I went north on Cty. Rte. 17 to Parker Road and walked downstream from the bridge.



The west side was posted but not the east. It was a challenging hike because the banks were high, the creek floor muddy and deep. Biting flies ranging from deer flies to mosquitoes serenaded me along the way.



Partial to rapids and pocket water, the deep, slow moving creek wasn’t exactly my cup o' tea. But I’m a sporting man and my curiosity got hooked deeper and deeper as I struggled along. You see, the creek was covered in a fabulous nave bumped out of a deep, old forest; its banks were lined with a variety of beautiful vegetation, including pockets of the most spectacular ferns I’d ever seen.



At a hair-pin bend, I dropped a wooly bugger over a sunken windfall. A fish, obviously thinking it was a caterpillar, shot out from under the gnarled branches and grabbed the fly in flight. Feeling the hook, it took the fight to the bottom, conducting a respectable tug-of-war, just like a brown trout would.



But it was a fallfish, one of the lowliest beasts in a stream.



Sitting on a stump nestled in a garden of ferns, I looked down at it, through water stained the color of strong tea by tannic acid. I gently raised it to the surface.



In my hands, it trembled; its frightened eyes following my fingers.



This display of emotion caused me to hesitate. Instead of simply pulling it out of the water and unhooking it, I lead it to a weedy shallow spot in a notch in the bank.. Removing the streamer while the fish was still submerged, I slowly backed off.



It watched me without moving for what seemed like a long time. Then it flopped, setting its head into the open flow. One powerful flap of its tiny tail, and it was gone.




Fallfish don’t grow big. I’ve seen them up to 18 inches but those are rare. Normally they go anywhere from 4 to 12 inches. And they fight like you’d expect a beast whose life is hardened through constant struggle against current and subsisting mainly on tiny insects, with an occasional worm thrown in.




Dark-backed, silver-sided and white-bellied, fallfish belong to the same group that carp do, the minnow family. Typically found in our northern rivers and lakes, most anglers simply call 'em chubs. They're thrive in just about every stream north of Oneida Lake; the Salmon River is loaded with 'em.



At another time I might have been angry at catching only a “rough fish”; maybe even blamed it for ruining my trip.



But Scriba Creek is an enchanting place, gracing me with the knowledge that even though I didn’t catch a trout, I still got a wonderful wilderness fishing experience; most importantly, I didn’t get skunked.



And after all, isn’t that what fishing’s all about?



Getting There: The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation website offers a map of public fishing rights sections it owns on Scriba Creek. Go to www.dec.ny.gov., click on Outdoor Recreation, then Fishing. Type Scriba Creek in the search box, scroll down to Oswego County, click on Scriba Creek and Spring Brook pdf.



For more information go to www.visitoswegocounty.com or call 800-248-4386 and request an Oswego County Hunting & Fishing guide.

Garden of ferns with a creek flowing through it



Scriba Creek south of Parker Rd. Note beaver dam on channel to the right

West Side Browns

Capt. Gehrig and 1st Mate Chad, holding the one that didn't get away

Late last month Greg Gehrig, owner of K&G Sportfishing (800-346-6533), invited me to go for brown trout aboard his luxury liner, Top Gun. (I mean any 40- foot long, three-story yacht, with a head tall enough for me to fit without bumping my head—I’m 6’5”—is luxurious!) It’s the biggest tub I ever fished out of in Oswego County, and when I went up to the bridge to talk to the first mate, Greg’s son Chad, I noticed I was looking down on everyone else out there.

We left Wright’s Landing at daybreak, heading straight out of the harbor. About a half mile later, we turned left.

Capt. Gehrig loaded four rods with Michigan Stingers and ran the baits off downriggers between 35- to 50-feet deep; and flat-lined a couple Stingers on lead core, seven colors out. Our target was 56 degree water and we trolled at 1.9 to 2.1 mph.

Before long, Chad reported “pods” of bait below us, with trout along the edges. Fish were there but they had lock jaw.

For a few minutes, anyway. Then one of the rods sprang to action. Unfortunately, I was too busy picking the good Captain’s mind for nuggets of fishing wisdom—the man just won the Pro Division championship of the Lake Ontario Pro-Am Orleans County tournament--and I ain’t ever won a tournament, so I wanted to know how it’s done.

Talk about being able to talk and work at the same time: mid-sentence, the captain ran over to the rod right next to me, pulled it out of the holder, handed it to me and requested “Bring ‘em in.”

Well, I fought the thing for a few seconds, just long enough to start developing the story I was going to tell all my friends when I got home, when suddenly my fingers experienced the angler’s greatest anguish—limp line.

Fish one; Spider nothing!

We trolled around some more, locating bait pods left and right, with browns always nearby. However, the end of June was under the weather most of the time: rain, sun, cold, warmth…and everything in between. The fish were a little out of sorts, to say the least.

I kept asking the captain questions. He kept filling the blanks. I was learning a lot.

Up in the hawk’s nest, Chad watched a pod of bait wash over the screen and ordered: “Get ready.”

I no sooner riveted my eyes back to the rods when one started dancing the “Brown Trout Trot.” I grabbed it--all by myself this time--and the fight was on.

I knew it was a good fish because it took so long to bring in…or maybe it was because so much line was out.

At any rate, when we netted it, the thing was hefty and we estimated it at around 10 pounds.

Having gotten a load of notes, a good fish and photos, I was prepared to let the crew off the hook and go home for the day. They looked at me like I lost some the strands in my head, web or something, and set our course for deeper water hoping to nail me shots of a humongous laker or king.

But that’s for my next post.

When we set out that morning, Captain Greg predicted the day’s fishing before we even dropped a line:

“When the fishing’s easy, anyone can catch fish, including the young guys. But when it’s tough like it is now, us old timers come through.”

You know, he convinced me.

For more information go to www.visitoswegocounty.com or call 800-248-4386 and request an Oswego County Hunting & Fishing guide.

Chad in the "crow's nest": room with a view!