The Salmon River at Pulaski is the East's great salmon-and-steelhead river — staggering fall runs of king and coho, a long steelhead season behind them, and a flow set by scheduled dam releases rather than the weather. Crowded in the salmon weeks, and rightly famous; the Douglaston private water and miles of public access share the same chrome.
The Salmon River in Pulaski draws more fishermen than any water in the Northeast, and for one reason: it gets the biggest runs of Chinook, coho and steelhead on the American side of Lake Ontario, and when the fish are in, the river is shoulder-to-shoulder combat fishing of a kind that has to be seen to be believed. It runs out of the Tug Hill plateau through a wooded gorge to the lake, a medium river of cobble, ledge and gravel with its flow propped up by reservoir releases that keep the fish moving. The bed is rounded cobble and bedrock; the famous runs and holes have names and reputations and crowds. Wading is honest freestone work, slick in the gorge and busy everywhere. It is not wilderness and not solitude, but for sheer numbers of large migratory fish on the fly, nothing else in the region comes close.
Wading: Slick gorge ledges, heavy crowds
- Mixed
- Partly confined
- Pool riffle