Agony and ecstasy in Pulaski as anglers try their luck on the Salmon River (photos)

The water is running high and the salmon are running hard in the Salmon River right now.

A welcome sunny break last weekend from recent rainy weather sent hundreds of anglers pouring into Pulaski to try their luck in the Town Pool section of the river, the epicenter of the fall salmon run.

Scores of anglers stood shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the river on Friday while onlookers watched from above on the Route 11 bridge. Excited cries of “Fish on!” echoed in the crisp autumn air, often followed by a disgruntled “Fish off!”

One such angler, William Race of Albany, hooked a salmon from atop the concrete wall next to the bridge. He muscled his way past dozens of other anglers as the fish streaked downstream, pulling Race with it.

“Heads up!” Race shouted. “Coming down!”

Race’s spinning rod curled into a C-shape as he fought the fish for a few minutes until the rod suddenly sprung straight again and his now-broken line floated back to him in the breeze. Race looked as if someone had punched him in the gut.

“Yesterday I hooked about 70 of them. Landed one,” Race said, holding up his index finger.

Asked if there was a trick to landing a hooked salmon, Race grimaced.

“Trick?” He snapped. “There’s no trick.”

Many salmon anglers will tell you the hard part isn’t catching salmon during the spawn. The hard part is getting fish into the net. And there are no shortcuts. The normal rules apply: keep your tip up, use only fresh line and sharp hooks, work the fish into shallow water, and above all else, have a skilled pair of hands on the net.

“There’s a 1,000 things that can go wrong,” said Scott Branagan, of Smyrna, who hooked eight fish before he landed a nice Chinook—incredibly with someone else’s stringer still attached to it—from the rocks on the upstream side of the bridge.

Like what? Well, people get in the way, or they cross your line, Branagan said, or the fish dislodges the hook on a rock, or maybe it just snaps your line because it’s still early in the season and the fish aren’t spawned out yet.

“But if one thing goes right,” said Branagan, “you can get them.”

Fishing from the rocks above Branagan was Mark ‘Remmy’ Remington, of Watertown, who’s fished the Salmon River since he was five years old. He’d just finished a 24-hour shift at the metal fabrication plant where he works; then, somewhat like a salmon himself, he headed straight to Pulaski, back to the spawning waters of his youth.

“Can’t beat it,” Remmy said.

Most salmon anglers prefer to use a salmon rod and reel, or a spinning rod, but Remmy wielded a center-pin reel more suitable for trout fishing. It’s about as basic as fishing gear gets, one step above tying a string to a stick in terms of technical sophistication. But it’s not a beginner’s rig by any means.

“When you’re float fishing, it all flows down the water all natural,” Remmy said. “It’s a natural presentation. Them fish are right in front of you.”

Remmy tossed his line into the churning center of the river, letting the current take it. When the float reached the bridge’s shadow, he reeled up and cast again. After only a few drifts he landed a fat Chinook, which he threaded on a stringer.

“I was just lucky to get that king,” Remmy said with a tired grin. “I’m actually going for trout.”

Farther upstream, Rusty Burnell and his buddies, all from Plattsburgh, occupied a large, flat boulder jutting into the river. A fly fisherman at heart, Burnell has been coming to the Salmon River for 40 years to fish for steelhead and brown trout.

“If I catch a salmon, I let them go,” he said. “I call them mudsharks—because they taste like mud.”

Many salmon anglers share Burnell’s opinion. Great Lakes salmon have dense white flesh due to their main diet of bait fish instead of shrimp, which is what makes the flesh of West Coast salmon pink and fattier—and tastier. Smoking the fillets is for many the best way to prepare Great Lakes salmon. The air in Pulaski is tinged with wood smoke for that reason.

“This is actually excellent for fishing, you just can’t get out were you normally do,” Burnell said about the high, fast water. Normally they’d be sitting in lawn chairs 20 feet out from their current spot, he said, but not today.

“The benefit of the river being deep: more fish. Hard part: catching them,” said Burnell’s friend, Dave Seymour. He pointed to Burnell’s son, Sidney, who was standing close to the middle of the river, casting a fly rod.

“Where he’s standing, that’s tough,” Seymour said. “I mean, he takes two steps forward, he’s gone.”

Mendo Aneveski, of Lincoln Park, New Jersey, first fished the Salmon River in 1980, and he’s returned each year since. In fact, this was his third trip up so far this season.

“This is the peak right now,” Aneveski said. “Run of the year I think.”

All the rain last week “pushed a lot of big, big salmon in,” he said. “And they keep breaking my line, but I don’t care, I keep them for friends, not for me.”

“They been breaking me off all day,” complained Aneveski’s son, Joey, salting his speech with four-letter words like a character in a Soprano’s episode.

“He was six years old when I first brought him here,” Aneveski said. That was before the Town Pool had a wall and accessible paths for anglers to fish from, he said. One time little Joey was standing on the bank mere feet away from a deep hole in the river. Aneveski warned him not to move, but when he turned around, Joey was gone.

“I pulled him out and he had a fish on,” Aneveski said proudly. “He fought it, he landed it. I’ll never forget that. That was the highlight of my life.”

As Aneveski related this harrowing and improbably heartwarming story, Joey and his brother, Pete, shouted encouragement to their buddy, Chili, who stood waist deep in the river, casting haplessly into the swift current. Chili had never been salmon fishing before.

“You gotta throw to the left!” Joey yelled. “Swing it like a wand, right to left!”

“Yo Harry Potter!” Pete yelled even louder, and they all burst out laughing.

“Can’t stay on the shore too long, can’t catch fish,” Aneveski said. He picked up his rod and waded into the river toward Chili.

“I’ll be coming up here til the day I die,” Aneveski said over his shoulder. “Put me in a wheelchair right here.”

Salmon River regulations

The season for brown trout, rainbow trout (including steelhead), coho salmon, and chinook Salmon is year-round, according to Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) regulations.

• Browns need to be at least 15 inches in length; rainbows, steelhead, and salmon need to be 25 inches
• Daily limit is three (3) in combination, not to include more than one (1) rainbow, steelhead, or brown trout
• Atlantic salmon must be at least 25 inches, with a daily limit of one (1) fish

Send us your salmon pics!

We want to see your catch: salmon, of course, but also trout too, or walleye, bass, pike, muskie, two-headed gobies. Just make sure to provide the name of anyone shown in the photo, their hometown, along with kind of fish, where they caught it, its size and weight (if possible), and the type of bait used. Tight lines, ya’ll.

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Steve Featherstone covers the outdoors for The Post-Standard, syracuse.com and NYUP.com. Contact him at sfeatherstone@syracuse.com or on Twitter @featheroutdoors. You can also follow along with all of our outdoors content at newyorkupstate.com/outdoors/ or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/upstatenyoutdoors.