Dynamic Duo

I was all set to leave on my Lake Ontario trib trip with my first stop being Oak orchard Creek just west of Rochester, NY, when my water softener decided to spring a nice leak at 1 am.  To make a long story short, my burner guy was able to fix it the next morning and my water and heat were restored.  With a quick check I was finally on the road to Pualski, NY to fish The Salmon River. I was going to get there by 3 pm, so my fishing time was short.  The last hour of daylight didn't provide the usual flash in a pan action, so I checked into the hotel, and waited for Matt to arrive.  After he got there we shot the shit, had a beer, and got some sleep. 5:45 am came quick, but we were on the water by legal fishing time in one of my holes that I like to start the day in the Upper Fly Zone.  The water was supposed to drop at 7 am, and it began to slowly recede.  We had some good hookups, but the high water made it tough for us to bring any to the net.  We worked down river in some snow squalls, but there were a lot of guys on the river.  We tried one of my honey holes, but the flow still wouldn't allow us to reach it.  We decided to make our way down river to try and tangle with some chromers.  We jumped into a hole, and immediately we had fish on.  We felt a little bad that we would find out that a guy was there ally day and only managed 3 hookups.  Dam we were below him, and it took us 5 minutes.  We continued to battle dime bright fish for the next few hours.  They did a number on use, but Matty did bring a fish to the net.  I knew she was a good fish, until I picker her up while she was in the net.  She was pushing 20lbs.  It felt like my 2 year old was in the net!  Ill let him tell you the rest of the story.  He did a great job fighting her.  We then worked back up river to the Lower Fly Zone.  We found only a handful of cooperative fish, but I did finally land one that was still on the fresh side.  All in all what a great day battling these incredible fish.  Constantly changing flies, tippet, weight, chasing each other up and down the river trying to catch up to the fish to net it, Matt optioning a fly box back to me as he ran with his fish,  dealing with the cold, snow rain, wind all make steelheading one of the coolest things you can do! 


With daylight burning and the pressure mounting, a chrome came to the net.