Salmon River & Pulaski NY daily fishing reports for skamania steelhead, salmon, brown trout, by driftboat guides at Yankee Fly & Tackle Shop, Oswego County, Fly Fishing Stories & Pictures

Winter Steelhead, Lower Section of The Salmon River New York

Friday was one of those small window of opportunities where Mother Nature threw us a bone. The weather reached the high 50's and the NY steelhead bite was on! I took this picture while I was talking to another fly & tackle shop owner. While we

admired the size of the steelhead we both noticed that the bank angler releasing the fish was unaware of how to properly release a steelhead. This happens a lot on the Salmon River NY and to let everyone know, you must hold the fish facing upstream by the tail and it will swim off on it's own. Pulling the fish backwards and then pushing it forwards is not the correct way to release a fish. This floods it's gills with stream sediment and drowns the fish. Keep in mind, a fish is already exhausted from being played and then having it's picture taken. I'm not saying you can't play a fish and take a picture of it. By all means, that's fine if you do it in a timely fashion. You sure don't want to let the steelhead flop around and flour itself in the cold winter snow while you try to find your camera. I'm simply trying to educate the anglers out there that are unaware of the right/proper way to release a fish. In ending, these two bank anglers accomplished two out of three steps correctly, which isn't bad. That SRNY Steelhead was definitely over ten pounds for sure! We have some really big steelhead in our river and anytime you see a warm up, that's the time to be here if you're not into temperatures below 50 degrees.