Date: 11/11/2020, weather: cloudy with temps falling from the upper 60s to upper 50s and a bit of a breeze. I drove out (from south central NY) to Oak Orchard, which is about a 2.25 hr drive. Target species was Atlantic salmon; I have never caught one and it’s on the fish list (sigh).
I arrived to find exactly what I always find: fileted fish in the parking lot, the stink of dead and rotting salmon, and a gigantic ditch filled with anglers taking their chance at the “catch of a lifetime.” I hate Oak Orchard, and as soon as I catch an Atlantic salmon, I will never go back, under any circumstances.
I made my way down to the main flow channel. I tied on a black woolly bugger with a bead pinned above it. I swung and drifted for 2 hrs. Nothing. I moved a little farther downstream. An hour later, still nothing.
This place is the absolute worst. There’s no such thing as reading the water here, Oak Orchard is literally a ditch that flows 2.5 ft plus or minus a foot all the way until the frog water stretch that eventually feeds into Lake Ontario. There is nothing, no riffles, no runs, no cover; it is literally a ditch. Oh, and fish here don’t chase, so you’re best off using a bobber, split shot, and a bead and hoping you drift within 0.5” of the fish’s mouth and it takes your fly out of instinct. Yeah, your fly out of the hundreds if not thousands (repeat casts included) before it made its way upstream to you.
I also hate bobber fishing, and I hate fishing the split shot bead/nymph combo. It’s not fun for me, watching all that metal and plastic doink along until you hook a fish. I also hate that if I were to do that, I would be competing with hundreds of centerpin and spin anglers whose ability to have a clean drift just can’t be matched with a fly rod. Oh, and the centerpinners love running their slip bobbers right across your line, it’s great.
Anyway, I had my share of misery, so I said fuck it and hit the side channel to see if there was anything going on there. I found a steelhead in a riffle and decided to take my chance. I hid in a thorn bush and swung my woolly bugger across its face. It whacked it, and I missed the hookset. This repeated no less than twelve additional times before the fish grew wary and I ran out of cuss words.
I traversed the riffle to find a pod of salmon, one gigantic female, a smaller female, and a male. I decided to drift my woolly bugger-bead combo through the pack and take my chances. I knew there was a high likelihood I would end up fouling a fish, but I’ve gotten pretty good at shaking the hook from fish I accidentally foul.
On the second drift, I saw my fly and bead heading right for the mouth of the smaller female. After the most subtle head movement you’ll ever see out of a fish, I lost sight of my fly and lifted my rod; she was hooked and head shaking.
Great, I actually had a chance of landing the fish given that it was a fair hook and that it was in shallow water. After putting all the pressure possible on her and some acrobatic net swinging, I bagged her.
The hook popped out while she was in the net, but my line was nicked up from her teeth, thus confirming the fair hook. I took a few quick pics before releasing her back into the run. Even though it wasn’t what I had come for, it still felt good to have a fish on the line. She was my first salmon since fall of 2018.
I found another pod of fish and swung through. I fouled a male in the pectoral fin but managed to yank my fly free. I knew I was pushing my luck, so I decided to call it a day. Skunked on the Atlantic yet again.
