January 28th Salmon River Steelhead

Fished the Salmon River today from Skeeter's to the Staircase area in town. We landed 8 fish today with many more hooked. I started the day swinging a surface fly called a pin popper in the colors of red-orange and black which is tied to actually mimic a raven float, which the browns will try to grab every once in a while and only during this time of year. I figured I'd focus on some notorious brown holding water and see what happens. The 5th cast of the day I had a brown boil on the fly as it started swinging. I didn't hook the fish but very cool to see anyway. I've also tied some spey flies in the raven float colors which have worked very well for browns as picturde below, along with a few of the fish landed today...

January 27th Salmon River Steelhead Fishing

Fished for a few hours today with my friend and guide Mark Ledden in his new Boulder Drift Boat. We fished from Pinneville to 2A and did well. Landed six fish and hooked some more including one monster that I fought for about 10 minutes before it finally broke me off. It came out of the water three times and took me about 75 yards upstream on a dead run. After losing that monster which was probably in the upper teens it was time to give up and throw in the towel. Here are a few that we did get to the net....

Oneida Lake Ice Fishing

I've been out the last few days on the ice trying to stay warm with the sub-zero temps we've endured. It was about -15 when we got set up on the ice monday morning but luckily it warmed up on tuesday and this morning with temps in the high 20s and low 30s. The fishing was hit and miss but when we did get into the fish we caught some great ones. We have been marking lots of fish on the flasher but very finicky and when they did hit it was very subtle. Here are some of the pics from the last few days....

January 15th Winter Steelhead on the Salmon River

Fished today with Brent, Scott, and Brian from Pa and they were tested with conditions we faced! Downstream blowing winds, slush ice, freazing guides on our rods,the water level dropping the previous night to 285cfs, and a tough bite overall. These guys were die hards hangin in there until dark with me and it payed off. Just before dark we had a good amount of action which inlcuded fish coming up and hitting our floats on the surface! We ended up landing seven fish which included three small skippers, three adult steelies and on brown trout with about five more nice fish hooked. Not bad considering what we were up against today. Here are some of the days pix....

Early Ice in Oswego County

In the past few weeks I have retired my fly and float rods and dug out the ice fishing gear to hit the hard water for a change of scenery. The early ice has been great on Sandy Pond! I've been on the pond probable 6 times and have just about topped off a bucket every time out with perch in the 8-12 inch range. Yesterday was the first day fishing somewhere other than the pond as we hit Oneida Lake. The fishing has been really good based on the reports but we had a tough day off of Constantia off the sunken islands. We marked many fish and saw lots of perch and walley on the camera but they jsut were not interested in any of our offerings. I did manage to land a few nice big keeper perch and a burbot. Here are some pics from the past few weeks on the ice...