Since I had to work in Syracuse last week anyways, I took two days of vacation and fished with Mike G and our buddy Andrew on their drift boats. We primarily targeted the tail end of the salmon run, but knew that the steelhead would be coming into the river as well.
We started Wednesday morning with high hopes, and perfect weather , but also knew that the largest push of fish had already occurred. we hooked up for a few salmon in various holes, working our way down river. We were scheduled to pick up my friend Rachel at the Tressel pool so we stopped for lunch and cooked some hotdogs on the boat.
Shortly before Rachel arrived, I was working the trestle pool with a chartreuse fly when it got absolutely smoked by a big steelhead. As you can imagine, chaos ensued! The fish fought like crazy in the current with long blistering runs across the pool and made several airborne jumps. She put up an amazing battle in the heavy current, they’re such a cool fish. Finally, I was able to work it back up river into the slack water and Andrew slid the net under her. She was a beautiful 8 pound chunk of chrome. High fives and hooting and hollering all around for that one! We carefully revived and released her to fight another day.
Soon, Rachel arrived, so we headed off downriver to try to get her her very first salmon. She fought two or three kings, but every time, the hook pulled on the fish. It was one of those situations where I wanted her to catch a fish so bad it didn’t matter if I caught another one or not. Just to see her catch her first would be the highlight of the trip. Finally, it happened and she fought a dark male king! He took her all over the run and was down river with the fly line precariously under a log, but Andrew was finally able to be net it for her. She was excited to the moon and back, as was I for her! The fish showed it was excited too by dumping his DNA on her pants! We all had a good laugh over that! Got milt??
We finished up the day’s float on Wednesday and enjoyed some great food and beverages back at Mike’s camper. We enjoyed some shrimp cocktail and I had made a large smoked meatloaf that really hit the spot for dinner.
Thursday was a much colder morning with temps in the 30s when we got on the water. We hooked a bunch of salmon and lost a couple of steelhead also. Andrew had been playing with his 2 weight fly rod and had hooked and lost several fish because he was so under gunned on purpose and was just having fun. He was finally able to land a nice king on that tiny rod. That was amazing to see! Overall, the fishing was good with plenty of opportunities and some nice fish landed. The steelhead has everyone’s attention now and there certainly are plenty in the river to be had. We saw one gentleman at the takeout launch that had two beautiful hen steelhead on his stringer.
I headed back for home on Thursday night once we had the gear put away and the boats parked.
Mike and Andrew were great hosts and certainly know that river like the back of their hand since they have been on the water every day for the last 53 days straight.
We put in our time and certainly were rewarded. . This was my first time fishing the river from a drift boat and it was absolutely beautiful to see all the different parts of the river that I’ve never been to before. Mike and Andrew did a great job of rowing us down river and avoiding most of the hazards and boulders just waiting to collide with us.
If you’re ever looking to do a drift boat trip for either salmon or steelhead, I would highly recommend Mike G and you can connect with him here on site.
Priceless. 
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