I went back to the Salmon River in and around Pulaski — pronounced Pulask-EYE — New York for a couple of days in late April.
My mentor in these things, Gary Dodson, is my main Catskill fishing buddy. Last year he convinced me to go to the famous Salmon River and chase steelhead, and I actually caught one on a fly rod.
I did not do this on this trip. But I did catch one. More on this in a moment.
Day one we hit it at dawn, and it was cold at 35 degrees, plus a gentle breeze from the Arctic Circle that made everything just so.
The river was high enough at about 1,400 cubic feet per second to make for some tricky wading.
We covered almost all the Douglaston Salmon Run area on foot and tried everything we could think of, Gary with his two-handed rods and me with a single hand 8 weight.
The result was nil.
After a solid six hours of this we stumbled back to the truck and returned to our little lodge, where we ate something and then we made a critical mistake.
We both decided to rest our eyes for just a little while.
That was at about 2 p.m. We both woke up around 5:30 p.m., and quickly concluded that the strong, manly course of action was to skip suiting up again and instead go to the restaurant at the Tailwater Lodge in nearby Altmar, where I resumed my study of the American Cheeseburger platter.
They call it a “smash burger” now, but it’s the same basic thing, and it’s still very good.
Upon our return I watched an exploitation flick from 1974 called “TNT Jackson.” Gary, who has no taste in these matters, sacked out.
Day two was considerably warmer but we still got skunked. However, we didn’t go at dawn so by early afternoon we were not completely knackered.
We had mangled a bit of lunch and were contemplating the afternoon’s strategy when Gary’s phone rang.
It was Salmon River guide Marcus Mcgivney calling to say he had the afternoon free and did we want to go for a boat ride.
We did.
This was a first for me. I have never fished with a guide, or from a drift boat.
We set off from the fly-fishing only area, keeping an eye out as the radar showed some slight unpleasantness developing over Lake Ontario.
Marcus has been doing this a while, and it shows.
The first thing I noticed was that he has a version of the Grateful Dead logo from the “Steal Your Face” album on the side of the boat. It’s got a fish on it and the lettering reads “Steel Your Face,” not “Steal.”
The first thing he noticed was the flow was greatly reduced. He checked his phone and sure enough, the release from the dam upstream was way down from the morning.
We set off and fooled around with our fly rods a while, getting still more bupkis.
Then Marcus asked if we wanted to try plugging.
We did.
Gary had described this to me, but it was so far outside my experience he might as well have been lecturing on contemporary dance trends in Paraguay.
Marcus described the following method as “reverse trolling,” and that’s about as close to it as I can get in a family newspaper.
Here’s the gist. There are three sturdy rods equipped with level line reels in holders on the port and starboard sides of the boat, plus one over the bow.
The plugs are big nasty-looking lures with treble hooks. They are let out to specific lengths — 20 feet, 30 feet — in front of the boat.
The sports — that’s Gary and yours truly — sat up front watching the rods. The guide — Marcus — manipulated the boat as the plugs wiggled and shimmied around downstream.
In regular trolling a lure or bait is towed behind a boat.
This is the opposite.
Eventually a steelhead gets fed up with looking at the plug shimmying and wiggling around and hits it.
And then it’s pure pandemonium. One of the sports has to deal with the rod that’s got the fish on while the other reels in the other rods so everything doesn’t get all tangled up.
Gary had done this before so when the first one went off on his side he got it in with a minimum of fuss.
When it was my turn I did everything wrong. We still managed to get the fish in but as Marcus said afterwards, “You have to forget everything you know about fishing.”
The physical strength involved in maneuvering the boat around with a set of oars, no motor, is considerable. Then there’s the monitoring of the three plugs. Add to that his knowledge of the river’s topography, plus the habits of steelhead, and you’ve got what separates the modestly-talented amateur — me — from the pro — Marcus.
As we moved from spot to spot, he also spoke at length about restoration efforts along the river. He hailed other guides in other boats, chattered with anglers on the banks, occasionally offering some quick tactical advice, and kept up a stream of commentary that was extremely entertaining.
It was also pretty salty. You’ll have to wait for my memoirs for the unexpurgated version.
If you want a memorable experience Marcus does business as Grateful Adventures LLC, 352-348-7721 or Mmcgivney@paulsmiths.edu.
