It was a wonderful October on the East Outlet. The weather was stunning and the salmon were in the best shape ever. We can’t remember when it was better size wise. We boated a few fat female salmon that were just shy of 4 lbs.
You still have until the 31st to fish the entire river. On November 1st the only stretch that remains open to fishing is from the dam to the yellow posts at the Beach Pool which is about a half mile.
This stretch will continue to hold fish well into December. The trout are now done spawning and will be dining mainly on nymphs. Salmon are already on their spawning beds which are downriver of the yellow posts in the closed waters. Once they finish spawning by mid-November they too will begin feeding.
Our best advise for late season fishing is “Go Small”. Fish will be picking away at the nymph population. With the exception of stoneflies everything else is tiny. Flip a few rocks and you’ll see lots of tiny mayfly nymphs moving about. Size 18’s and 20’s will be your best choice. It’s also a good idea to toss out an orange egg pattern. There has been a lot of egg laying going on.
As we get into mid-December when the lake begins to ice over water temperatures fall into the mid-30’s and fish begin leaving the river to forage on smelt throughout the winter months.
So there is plenty of time left for some fine fishing. Our guides made their last trip down the river yesterday and ended our season with another big salmon day.
This will be our last report for this season. We will be relocating to our winter fishing camp in Naples, Florida soon where we’ll begin our winter charters in the 10,000 Islands and Everglades National Park. It will be interesting to see how hurricane Irma rearranged the backcountry.
We sincerely thank all our new and old customers for their patronage during our 35th season of “Serving the Serious Fishermen”. We are already talking about the 2018 season and speculating the fishing should be equally as good as this one was.
We’ll be reporting from Florida once we are settled and the flats boat gets launched.
