Salmon Fishing

I’ve been thinking of salmon fishing lately.  Not salmon fishing the tribs off of the great lakes, although that, too, is special. I have some fond memories assembled in my mind of fishing on both sides of Lake Michigan with good friends and the Lake Erie feeders with my dad.   But no, lately I’ve been thinking of the more traditional form of hunting the king of fishes, the Atlantic salmon.

The thoughts first crept into my mind the other day as I was packing my gear bag for a day trip to the local trout waters.  For various reasons, some of which I don’t yet fully understand, I have around eight boxes of flies that that I juggle around each time I go out after the salmon’s smaller cousin.   This past weekend I was fumbling through them again as I packed.  By this time of year they are essentially a disorganized mess.  I can usually find a few split shot rolling around in a few of them and a couple strands of tippet still attached to the dry-droppers (as if I was planning on re-using that 7x again). I think there is a broken fly in there somewhere and certainly some mangled ones, and maybe a gum wrapper that should come in useful sometime, somewhere.  The useful flies that are in there are certainly not lined up all nice and pretty like they were at the end of the fly tying season, lined up like polished fighter jets on the aircraft carrier waiting to get called into action.

In general there are a few dry fly boxes, a few sub-surface boxes and usually a few specialty boxes.  The funny thing is, of all these flies, I probably use only 5% of them throughout the season.  And even then I usually go for the same few patterns.  There’s the bushy dry with a highly visibly wing used to hang the dropper fly in rough water, there is some sort of tiny thread midge with a bit of flash on it, a bead head pheasant tail, and a black wooly bugger.

All of this chaos brings my thoughts to salmon fishing because one of the reasons I love salmon fishing is its relative simplicity.   One box of flies tucked into the inner wader pocket, forceps and clippers hanging from a boot-lace lanyard, a spool of tippet in the shirt pocket, a wading staff belted around the waist and a net.  Add a double-handed spey rod and large arbor reel and that is all that is required.

I also love salmon fishing because of the fly box, singular.  The fly box is really one of the two forms of color brought to this game of chase.  It’s lined with beautiful flies of a decent size in oranges, bright greens, blacks and purples.  There are usually a few rows of tube flies, a few rows of doubles, and a few of singles all in size small, medium and large.  Together with the fly line it is interesting that these are the main forms of color that link the fish to the fisher.  All else - the water, the sky, the streamside and even the fish - are shades of grey in my memory.

I also love salmon fishing because of the casting.   One hand placed above the reel and one hand loosely cradling the rod from below.   Line held between the cork and the index finger as the rod is lifted back over one shoulder, across the chest and up over the other shoulder before being snapped forward.  Swish… swish….shoot.  Over and over the sequence is repeated as the line shoots across the river, leaving a trail of water drops falling behind it.  Cast….cast….step, step, step.  Over and over the sequence is repeated as the fisher works down stream.  Down and across and the line falls in loose wiggles.  A mend or two upstream controls the flight of the fly in the water column.  It seems like a ballet of sorts and it’s all a rather meditative experience.  So much so that, many times, I have been so totally mesmerized by the casting sequence that it really did not matter if a big salmon slowly pulled at the color at the end of the line or not. 

My mind quickly reverts back to today’s reality as I snap the fly box closed and toss it into my over stuffed gear bag.  Disorganized or not, I love trout fishing just as much.