Did I Miss The Run? Where Are All The Fish?

Labor Day weekend 2019 was a great time to be on the Salmon River. This my take on Labor Day weekend and give you a Salmon River fishing report and prediction for the coming weeks. The predictions from different sources were putting the run of fish to start on Thursday or Friday. At the start of the week, there was not much activity, and on Wednesday it was not looking hopeful. However, on Thursday, fish began to pile up slowly in the Estuary but still no major movement. Then on Friday with the water levels going up, it triggered fish to begin to move up into the run. Douglaston Salmon Run reported:

A beautiful weather day and excellent salmon fishing at the DSR. It doesn’t get much better than that. Good numbers of fish moved today, especially during the first half of the day and all the angler’s that I spoke with reported having had an “excellent day.”

On Saturday, Douglaston Salmon to Run reported:

Numbers of fish hooked, brought to hand were, for many of our anglers was, simply, “too many to count.”

From Friday to Sunday over Labor Day weekend, fish were stacked up from the Lower Douglaston Salmon Run to the Ball Park. The Douglaston Salmon Run reported most anglers were hooking into fish. On the public side, most fish were being caught by the Lower Staircase and by the Long Bridge. Anything above 81 into Altmar was filled with kayakers, so fishing was difficult.

Image is from instagram @joefish_16

instagram @joefish_16 reported:

Fishing is hot man! Fished all morning. Caught a ton. Seen at least 60. This run right now on Labor Day weekend is 10000 times better than the past 2 years.

During this Labor Day weekend, we had a few standout fish caught.

There was a beautiful Atlantic that was caught by Joe Runco

There was also a trophy brown trout caught by Sgt Chevy

So if the run is happening, where are the fish? Why are some of the reports from anglers inconsistent?

1. It is still very early in the season. The peak of the season is usually around October with the weather being much colder. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but this is not one of those years.

2. The Labor Day event was not the start of the full run but rather more of an initial movement of fish. Every year, there are fish that enter early, and this year they all concentrated on Labor Day. Thus, it became an event rather than a run.

3. The ratio of fish to angler. During Labor Day weekend there was a concentration of fish but with fewer anglers than during the peak of the season. So for those anglers that were fishing, this seemed like a big run.

4. After the Labor Day event, fish have been trickling in. Some days depending on unknown reasons you will get a robust, consistent movement of fish. However, on days when there is no strong push, there is still fish that trickle in. Usually, when this happens the fish will move in during the early morning hours and then shut down around 8:30 – 9:00 AM. Then most fish are going to sit and hide in the deeper holes.

5. The pods that entered last weekend and now this week are now beginning to fill up the upper part of the river. Additionally, as some anglers are starting to hear that there was an event during Labor Day weekend, they are beginning to take the drive up. As fish are beginning to fill up in the big holes in the upper part of the river and anglers are putting pressure, there is more activity in holes like the Sportsman, Trestles, Ellis and Altmar. For this past week, the Trestles is a great place because it represents a choke point that anglers can take advantage of where there is lots of pressure.

So the fish are there, but it depends on when you come that you are going to see excellent fish movement. Otherwise, fishing is still back to early-season work. Based on what I see, I think there will be another intense concentration at the end of September as the weather cools down. That will probably be the start of the main run.

As we are now going into the second week of September, we will be publishing a report every other day. If you want immediate visual reports please subscribe to my Instagram @salmonrivernewbie.