It’s looking like I’ll miss the salmon run this year. In the big picture that’s no big deal: the fish will come up just fine with out me and the crowds will be there like every year. There will be stories of nut-cases fighting over casting spots, of two fisherman hooked into the same fish–at the same time–of bar fights, of game wardens, of postcards days coming in between hints of winter from across the lake
And I won’t be there.
. Yes, in the big picture that don’t mean much. And I know what choices I’ve made and be careful what you wish for: I’m at the airport right now, waiting for a plane. By this afternoon I’ll be in California and by tonight I’ll be on the road to Bakersfield (I think) and I’ll spend the next week driving across country meeting with radio personalities trying to convince them to play my song: in all honesty to myself, probably a vain pursuit: I don’t know how records make it onto the air: I’ve done years of this kind of glad-handing with Lydia Miller, Dean Miller, Steve Holy, Lila McCann, and for all the chili cook-offs we judged, all the free lunch time concerts we gave, all the donuts we brought to the station we got little if any air play out of it (Steve Holy’s “Brand New Girlfriend” being the exception) and to tell the truth, I have no idea how that happened. It seemed like Steve and I worked much harder to get other songs of his on the charts to no avail
I guessing it all comes down to money and who ya know, and that’s fine, that’s life. And money and who I know has gotten me this far...however, I have no idea if it will get “Cowtippin’” on the radio...regardless, I’m about to drive across the continental US campaigning on my behalf, so if it don’t fly it ain’t for lack of trying.
Meanwhile there will be hordes gathered at the dam on Oak Orchard Creek. The King salmon will start to stack up and the lifters will have a heyday. Factory workers and the unemployed from Buffalo will drag stringers of gnarly-looking chinook and maybe the early brown trout or two up from the creek. Meadows and corn fields will become huge parking lots, $5 for the day and the local accents will be peppered with twangs from Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, New Jersey, Toronto and the Ukraine. Yes, the Ukraine. I don’t know when the Russians invaded Western New York but heir presence is ubiquitous on the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario tributaries this time of year. Legends surrounding them and the local Seneca Indians abound; The Russians for their long-lining and the Seneca’s for their fish trapping. I don’t know if any of it’s true, but I hear the murmurs of contempt every year and every year I never see it for myself.
I started fishing the Salmon River about ten years ago. That first year found us (my dad and my cousin and myself) there somewhat by accident. My Dad and my Uncle George had made a trip to the Adirondacks the year previous, to hunt. In almost sixty odd years on the planet neither one of them had ventured more than a hundred miles from Chautauqua Co. to hunt, or fish. If I remember it was Georges idea to hunt the Adirondacks that year. Maybe he knew that his health was in decline at the time, I suspect as much. He and my dad explored the woods around the Tug Hill plateau that year, flushing more partridge (grouse) than anything else, probably wishing they’d brought shotguns rather than muzzle-loaders. According to my dad, they had the time of their lives despite coming home empty handed. Not long after they returned home George saw a doctor about a nagging pain in his shoulder. Six months later, after several awful bouts of chemotherapy, he succumbed to the effects of mesothelioma. My dad said among his last words were “I wish I’d have gone more places and seen more things.”
With Georges words in mind, my dad set aside a couple weeks in October to hunt the Adirondacks that next year/ More accurately, we’d be hunting the foothills of the Adirondacks, around Inmans’ Gulf outside of Adams New York. Now, I know most people think of New York City when they think of new York at all, and if that’s what’s in your head as I describe this place you’re way, way off. Adams NY is in Jefferson Co, where the shores of Lake Ontario merge into the St Lawrence River. Jefferson Co. Is one of the least populated counties in the US east of the Mississippi or so I’ve been told. Around here you’ll see Canadian flags flown, see snowmobiles for sale, hear French on the radio and you’ll get served brown gravy with your fries. Aside form the odd dollar general, Walmart off the interstate, or Kwick fill gas station, it doesn’t look like much has been built around here since maybe the mid-fifties or so. There are Taverns scattered all over the place. Most of them with Labatt’s Blue Banners stretched across their entrances saying “Welcome Hunters..” The local radio station broadcasts out of Sandy Creek NY. They play Country. Nothing but Country. Old Country. IMHO they are about the greatest radio station on the planet, WSCP. In the day they’d play whatever old country the DJ felt like playing. At 8am every morning there was a morning “truck report” which consisted each day of the announcer saying “smooth sailing on the I-81 clear to Montreal....now here’s Dave Dudley.” The afternoon Jock would play Louvin brothers bootlegs he made on an 8-track tape. The concert would run non-stop for the duration (45 minutes) after which the Jock would come on air to plead “alright, alright already, I’ll play that damned Shania song after the commercials, then STOP calling me!!”
That year, we hunted around Inman’s gulf for over a week. It was very cold for October, there was about a foot of snow after the second night in camp ( we were in tents) and we had to thaw out the ice from a sauce pan to make coffee every morning. We hunted with muzzle loaders by the lake and with 270's up on the plateau after the season started. I walked many excruciatingly slow miles along the ski trails looking for sign, seeing little, flushing a lot of partridge (damn I wish I had a shotgun!) That year none of us would bring home any meat. Oh well, that’s why it’s called hunting, not killing.
One afternoon that first year, we’d decided to go into town and replenish the beer supply My cousin Corky and I could both put a hurting on a 12pack (still can) ....and coming back from town at the Sandy Creek bridge on Rte 3 there were a few cars parked, an indication something is under the bridge, and we felt obliged to stop. At that time it had been years since I’d fished –or shall I say snagged for salmon–I’d lived in California for a couple years, and then in TN--–and I’d forgotten what it was like to catch salmon fever. We walked down the banks of the stream and right there below the bridge was a small pod of what to me were HUGE fish. Back in Chautauqua Co the average steelhead might run to 12 pounds on the big side. We’d had chinook and coho in Lake Erie when I was very young but the NY DEC had stopped stocking them due to poor returns years earlier. Back then the practice of “snagging” or “snatching” was legal and as such I guess I thought of it as ethical as well. The fact that we’d snag fish at night while holding a lantern in the dark is another story. (YES I have done redneck things. As an adult I regret them.)
Anyhow. ...there were a few fisherman huddled over not-so-many-fish that day. The fish were Chinook Salmon, also known as Kings (by most locals) or as “Spring” Salmon (if you live in Alaska). All fish were in the 25lb class. Surrounding the pod were several “fisherman” in neoprene waders, utilizing fly rods run with monofilament on free-spinning large arbor reels. The terminal tackle consisted of a large single hook covered with as piece of sponge sprayed with anise-oil about two feet or so beneath a “slinky, ----basically a sock of lead---designed with the intention of getting the hook down on the creek bottom, where the “fisherman” could dredge in front (or sometimes in the middle) of the fish, hooking it “legally” in the mouth or (not legally) anywhere else. At the time, I hadn’t fished in NY in a long time and the reg’s had changed, not only outlawing (in theory) the practice of snatching (which is exactly what the gentleman in the creek were doing that day) but also banning the use of treble hooks of any size, in streams during the salmon/steelhead run. Back in the day when we’d snagged in the dark, we’d done so with really large treble hooks, 3/0 hooks with an inch-and-a-half gap from shank to point. They were deadly. “Ethical” fishing back then meant using a ”Little Cleo” spoon with a size 8 treble hook and getting the fish to actually strike the lure. An unlikely proposition most of the time.
“That’s an illegal bait!” Yelled one camouflaged lifter with a Buffalo Bills cap on his head.
“Huh?”
“No treble hooks!” he said to me indignantly
“Huh?”
“That’s against regs,” he said pointing at my “Lil Cleo.”.
I took off the lure as he hooked into a HUGE king–in the eye.
As I re-rigged this guy hauled in the King. It was the size of my leg. With what I’d guess was 50 lb test the procedure took about 2 minutes. When he’d landed the salmon the Bills fan in camo carried the decaying-half-alive carcass to his truck where he ran a grappling hook scale through it’s kype and responded with a loud
“Fuck!.... Only 27!!
“I’m gonna break thirty pounds one of these days,” he said to his buddy.
I remember him giving me dirty looks Very clearly I remember that. And Corky saying he’d “kick that city-fucker’s ass if he gave us any more shit.”.
That was ten years ago.
I caught salmon fever in a bad way that day. I didn’t land any fish, let alone hook into any. I didn’t know what the hell is was doing. I hadn’t done any research, hadn’t asked questions, I thought what I knew would work. It didn’t. No matter, it was cool to see those big fish in that little stream.
The next year things changed. The trip had now become known as the “George McGraw Memorial,” in Uncle George,s honor my father and my cousin and I all vowed to set aside time every year at hunting/salmon season to head up to this part of New York and shoot deer, drink beer, and try and catch fish. The second year saw an upgrade in accommodations. Rather than tent camp, my dad reserved us a cabin at Selkirk Shore State Park on the beach of Lake Ontario. Selkirk Shores is almost on the mouth of the salmon river. A small tributary, Grindstone Creek, empties in Ontario at Selkirk’s picnic area. Stories abound of little kids catching huge Kings on a worm on a spinning rod in Grindstone Creek. We went to Sandy Creek again. We saw fish. We had fly rods. I’d done research, tied flies that were supposed to catch fish, I worked it hard, fishing the days length everyday for a week. I caught nothing. My father, on the other hand, became legendary that year. While Corky and I would have starved trying to feed ourselves, my dad shot a big Doe an hour after muzzle loader opened and hooked into three big kings in a very short pre- dusk session on the Salmon at Altmar. I was happy for him. I was also very jealous. My dad had relied (or so I thought) on what information I’d gleaned from books and magazines and what flies I’d tied for him. I’d fished for days and still hadn’t gotten the skunk off. My dad bagged his deer on opening morning, slept the whole next day and drove around most of the next. When he finally got motivated to actually wet a line he was successful almost immediately.
That evening I learned an invaluable lesson from my old man: “forget your books and magazines..You want to catch fish? Watch someone who’s catching fish, make friends, ask questions. Indeed after a couple days on the river it seemed like my dad had made friends with just about everybody. He’d made a few enemies too. At almost sixty years old he didn’t shy away from telling someone lacking etiquette what he thought of them: “Can you work your way in? Well, it’s a BIG River, pal, or MOVE motherfucker, or my next cast is in your eye!”
In the whole week I hooked into a few kings after my dad explained to me the secret: cast at the hen’s tails and the males while get territorial on anything moving into the nest. I hooked up three times. All fish took me downstream and broke me off. My dad had about as much luck actually landing fish.
The third year at Pulaski is when Big Bill (my dad) and I really got our game on. Armed with what I learned the years before I came prepared with boxes and boxes of small flies and spools and spools of small diameter flourocarbon. Even if they are half-dead on up the river, those big kings have excellent eye sight and accordingly are very, very line-shy. They’re very bait shy as well (most of the time) and will simply move out of the way of most any object coming downstream at them. The method I concocted to catch these fish was this: use small, very small flies and small diameter flouro (which supposedly disappears underwater) and basically force feed the bait into the salmons mouth. Fishing the upper-fly section we were blessed with a thick run of big Kings that season, along with the occasional Coho, brown trout and steelhead. I presented (and lost) version after version of size 14 green nymph–some in fishes mouth, others on the river bottom, following the adage “If you ain’t losin’ tackle, you ain’t catching fish,” TRUE indeed. Problem was I wasn’t landing any of the Kings I hooked into. Running 25lb test down to 6lb tippet on a 25lb behemoth that uses the current to it’s advantage you will come up the loser in every contest. I assume it was from observing somebody else’s success that my father figured out that if you ran, literally ran down stream to get below the fish you might have a fighting chance at landing a leviathan. A Salmon is not an intelligent animal, it has one mission in life: to spawn...well, make that two missions, to spawn and survive. Considering how this is a fish destined to expire only shortly after achieving that first goal....
Getting below the salmon in the current, the fish will fight tension (from the angler) against it, running against the stream, tiring itself out, giving the angler (a very appropriate term considering our use of geometry and physics in this situation ) the advantage as the animal tires and the fisherman can haul the fish to shallow water where he can bring it to hand in a net, or as is my personal preference, by grabbing it above the tail and “tailing it” out of the water.
That year the fishing started out good on the Tuesday we got there. By Wednesday we thought it couldn’t get any better, by Thursday it did get better and by Friday my dad and I were “putting on a clinic.” I might have landed a dozen fish the last day of the trip, all over twenty lbs, I’m sure I hooked into over a hundred, sometimes as many as six fish on consecutive drifts...by the time we headed back home I was relieved. My forearms hurt from reeling.
In the years after that we made it to the Salmon River without fail. Every season was different, we’d be early for the run, late for the run, hit the run right on the nose, or get the feeling that there wasn’t going to be a run at all. While my dad was alive we never beat that third year for catching fish. I went back the next season and people remembered who I was “You’re that guy who knocked the pants off ‘em at Uppers, last year, aren’t ya?”
Yes. I am.
I felt like a rock star.
My father’s’s health started to decline in ‘06. I missed the year before at Pulaski due to my insane touring schedule. In the wake of Nashville Star I had to “strike while the iron was hot”according to my dad, although he’d made me promise, promise that I’d set aside two weeks next year to go to Pulaski with him. I’d been there sitting at the table in cabin 12 in ‘04 when he’d a had a mini-stroke and didn’t tell me about it. He didn’t want to go home or to ruin my vacation. He survived open heart surgery to deal with the damage that 40 years of smoking had done to his arteries and we thought we might get another ten years of his company. In ‘06 he said he was still uncomfortable from having his chest cracked open and that he wouldn’t sleep well enough to enjoy the trip. He stayed home, I stayed on the road. That winter he saw the doctor regarding some other nagging issues and we got the bad news we’d all been suspecting we’d hear someday: he had cancer. At first, while it was taken seriously enough, we were told not to worry too much: men survive prostate cancer all the time. ‘Live your life,’ the doctors said. My parents went to Paris that Christmas. I stayed on the road. It was almost as if cancelling gigs to go on that trip was to show that I didn’t have faith that my dad would be okay.
“I’ll catch ya next year I said.”
And writing that down of course, you know there was no “next year.” The cancer my dad had was mis-diagnosed at the onset and-–maybe fortunately in the bigger scheme–my dad’s health, once it started deteriorating, deteriorated rapidly. In a way a blessing, considering how he suffered. And not to get political, but if you don’t think that our health system could at least use a tweak then you are either extremely rich or just plain fucking crazy and have never lost someone–someone who supposedly had “good” insurance to an awful disease like cancer.
(And as a corollary: if you don’t believe that marijuana should-- at the least-- be legal for medicinal use—for people like my dad who ate oxycodin’s and still felt miserable and turned –--literally--- turned grey...if you don’t think we should allow that naturally-growing-the-way-God- made-it weed cannabis to be used to ease the suffering of dying people...... FUCK YOU).
As the story goes, we lost my Dad that July and it was about as awful a thing a close family like mine–or yours–should ever have to go through. It’s over two years now and I still think about Big Bill all the time and he was my best friend and my best source of good advice. He was my moral compass, my think-through crazy- ideas- with guy, he was the inspiration for more than a song or two and more than all that, he was my fishin’ buddy.
That same year I went to Pulaski all alone. Not all alone really, you never get much of the river to yourself while you’re there, but I camped alone, drank Busch Light in a can alone, and I listened to the World Series on the radio alone. The weather that year was mostly gloomy. In my mind, I do remember one nice sunset on the estuary, otherwise I remember rain, and more than anything I remember that as the year that the fishing I thought couldn’t possibly get any better GOT better. If Selkirk Shores is right on the banks of Lake Ontario not a mile from the mouth of the salmon, it doesn’t mean we (my dad and I ) ever fished the river anywhere around there. For all of Georges wishing he’d “gone more places and seen more things” Big Bill and I got into a habit of fishing the upper fly-section every season and that was it. We stuck to it I had explored most of the popular spots on the Salmon: The Sportsman’s hole, the Compacter, Altmar, Trestle Pool, I’d even had a few banner days to myself above compacter where I’d caught fish and had no neighbors what-so-ever. But if Billy was with me we fished upper-fly and we did if not great then good enough and we knew the run and where they fish where likely to stack up and we were consistent and successful there so why mess with it if it works, right?
At the mouth of the Pulaski there is a private reserve owned (how conveniently?) by The Douglaston family. I guess there’s a politician or two in there, I don’t know the whole story, I just know that the Douglaston Salmon Run as it is known is the first stretch of fish-able water on the Salmon, the lowest real estate that you can work a fly-rod from...I also know that you have top pay to fish it. I found this out after having hauled a canoe up the estuary into the run that first year...it’s remarkable I wasn’t kicked out. I don’t think you could get away with that now.
Back when I started fishing the Salmon Douglaston was $10 per rod per day, which, when the price of a fishing licence was twenty bucks seemed a bit exorbitant. A permit to fish on reservation (Seneca Indian) was $14 back then. My, have things changed. Nowadays my out-of state license in NY runs $50 I think, the Seneca’s charge $30 and Douglaston charges a whopping $30 a day to fish on its property (for all I know It may have gone up even more). As for me. I blame it on BUSH. George Bush. No, not George W Bush, I blame all kinds of other shit on him...it’s the dad I’m talking about, #41. I kind of liked Bush Sr. He seemed like an intelligent, capable guy (forgetting any insinuations surrounding Iran-Contra)... I think Me and Bill could have fished with him and had a good time. (Actually, I think I could fish with W and have a good time too, it’s that whole leader-of-the Free world thing I never liked him having something to do with) but again, let’s not talk politics. I’m sober as I write this and I’m calm and in a pretty good mood and I‘d like to keep it that way.
Anyhow. Back in the early part of the decade, Ole George HW came to Pulaski and fished and had the whole of Douglaston to himself for a day. The whole of Douglaston, which is to say he had both sides of the river for the first five miles upstream from the mouth to himself and his secret servicemen. For this he is to be loathed. We’ll maybe not so much that but as for the part that he failed to land any fish and that his cast “had an inside trailing loop” well, if you ask me, president or not, he just doesn’t deserve to have that whole section to himself for a day, a whole day. He hasn’t put in the work. I have and I don’t deserve the whole river to myself, No One does.
It’s not democratic.
But again, enough about Politics. George Sr fished the Salmon and it made some news and what was already a crowded fishery got even more crowded and Douglaston got more notoriety and they raised their prices and what’s a poor guitar player like me supposed to do? Spend $30 a day to fish? On private property? Might as well take up golf....
But then again...the run is SO close to the State Park where I camp, how could I not explore it? (“wish I’d gone more place, etc...) That year my dad passed--in his memory-- I paid the thirty bucks and if anything it was worth shortening that drive to about two minutes to get to the fishing hole. I arrived, along with the other 300 anglers (that’s right three hundred) at 5 am to get myself a good spot on the Douglaston. At 5am in Upstate NY at that time of year, the second week of October, it is pitch black at that time of the morning. Each and every fisherman waiting in line to get access to the river wears a headlamp, the kind you’d see on a coal miner. Most have fly rods, some have noodle rods (long spinning rigs designed for Crappie/and or Salmon fishing) the length offers some leverage over the big fish. Down here on the lower river where the fish are still fresh from the lake–not black and spawned out–you need that leverage....as I was about to find out.
I walked through the woods towards the sound of rushing water. In the pitch black I wouldn’t be able to suss-out a spot regardless so why not just get to the closest section? I waded in, Looking up and down river was like seeing fireflies, hundreds of sportsmen, flashing their head lanterns as if to say “this is my spot, keep your distance.” Arriving on the water it’s barely 6am, maybe. According to the regs, fishing on Salmon river is legal from dawn to dusk (or is it a half-hour before ‘til a half hour after? I forget) either way, now that you have a spot, there is a wait involved before you can legally cast. By my estimation, that wait should be over by the time it’s light enough for me to be able to tie on a fly with my flashlight.
They might as well shoot off a canon or ring a bell. As the sky lightens up to that certain point you begin to hear the whizzing of reels as the go into their backing, you hear splashing, hoots of joys and the cry “Fish ON!!.”
I stayed in my spot til about noon. The run I fished was on the deep side, three to four feet in the middle which in itself makes the proposition of hooking a king a challenge. The easy way to do it is to get them into shallower water where they can’t get around your fly so much. Regardless I hooked into and landed several nice fish, something no one else around me was doing. I had a good time, enough real estate to myself, and I had a little bit of an audience.
After taking a lunch break I decided to explore the run taking a walk down river to see if I could walk to where I’d pulled my canoe into years previous. I was surprised to see some open sections far down stream and quickly claimed a section that held fish in numbers. To add to the allure of the spot there was a channel of slate above me which acted as a fish funnel. Funnel’s I learned form Big Bill are you’re best friend when it comes to finding game, be it deer or fish or turkey, animals are like people they’ll take the easy way if given a chance.
So I stood in this spot and I caught fish. Make that a lot of fish. And to be accurate I landed a lot of fish, I had plenty of stream below me to get leverage, I had the sun shining at the right angle to sight fish, I had the right rod, the right flies, I think I had Big Bill watching over me..
So of course the next day I handed over $30 dollars once more and If I thought the fishing couldn’t get any better I was (again) wrong. I don’t know how many salmon, King and Coho I landed that day but I’m gonna guess it was over thirty and I hooked into well over a hundred. I started at sunup, finished at dusk and was wiped out. I sat by the fire that night and tried to stay awake to listen to the Red Sox playoff game but I was out after two beers.
And of course I paid the thirty bucks agin the next morning and went to that same spot and it was a beautiful day and If I thought I couldn’t beat the day previous I certainly got a good start on it by noon I’d landed twenty five Kings ( I counted) over 25lbs (I estimated) had some real fun with the odd-pod of coho coming through (they were like motorcycle gangs churning up the water) and had according to an at-first unwelcome-visitor who helped funnel in the pod from across the bank “so many salmon in front of me that I could walk across on their backs.” The coho, like the Kings, were mostly still silvery at this point in the river, still feisty, still healthy. After lunch it struck me how much my forearms were starting to hurt and I told myself that If I hooked into a nice silvery Coho that I’d keep it and maybe call it a day. I mean, how much of a good thing can you have, eh? I had enough pods come through that I could be selective and after about an hour I had my fish: 20lbs +, silvery on the outside, nice and pink on the inside, I played him for fifteen minutes or so, hauled him to the bank, said a little prayer of thanks and quit. Walking back to my truck I had another fisherman or two remark “holy shit that ‘s a nice steelhead.” “It’s a coho,” I said, “It’s still fresh.”
I took that fish to the market on the corner of routes 13 and 3. They, like a lot of other establishments in the area, will clean and package your salmon, if you’re too lazy (or in my case too damned tired) to do it yourself. The fella at the cleaning station kept calling me “Chief”....said he’d “get to my fish in a while, Chief,”so I went and got some good beer (Saranac?) And some sides for the grill while I waited. I came back when my fillets were ready and I went back to my campsite. I may have hade some intentions of getting back on stream before the day was over, but I got my propane grill going and had a beer in my hand and that coho with a little chili powder and cumin and brown sugar on it, cooked on that grill all of an hour after it had been swimming full steam up the creek was about the best fish I’ve eaten in my life.
I’m sitting on a plane right now. Thirty thousand feet up in the air on my way to LA to start a radio tour. I’m going to land this morning, get in a vehicle and drive right back across the country and try and convince radio to play my song. I”m gonna play show’s next week in Pittsburgh, Mayville New York, Rochester NY, Ellicottville, NY. Half the reason I booked those shows was an excuse to be in upstate NY when the salmon were in. I’ll probably have to bolt as soon as I’m done with those shows and continue trying to convince radio that they should give me a chance. I’ll probably miss the salmon run this year, but sitting here on this plane, writing this all down I kind of feel like I’m there right now, and I miss Pulaski, the smell of the breeze blowing off Lake Ontario, those hardwood trees all red and gold, sitting on the back steps off the cabin with a beer watching a doe and her fawns come through the clover, and most of all I miss Big Bill. I promise I’ll make it up next year, dad. I promise.
