Steelhead Fishing in New York

This past Thursday, after work, Galen, Chad, Aaron, and I loaded up by brothers new Ford F-150 with all our gear and headed north into the night. We arrived in East Otto New York, a bit south of Buffalo and setup camp in the State Forest there. Made a nice fire, shot the breeze, and went to bed around 3am.

The next morning we went to the Zoar Valley to fish on the Cattaraugus for steelhead trout. However the river was running pretty murky, so we hiked out and drove out to Silver Creek and found a nice stream there. Veteran fly fishers Galen and Aaron set the novices Chad and I up with some flies and a rod. Five minutes later I had a nice steelhead landed. Not to be out done, Chad brought in a much larger trout just a few minutes later. The rest of the day the four of us had some good fish on the line but nothing in hand. Until the last five minutes before sundown when Galen landed a big one. Back at camp we cooked the fish in foil with lemon and butter and enjoyed a fine dinner by the campfire.

Day two we headed back to the same creek and brought in three large steelhead. Made a fire on the river bank and cooked one fish. After that the rain started to hit around 4pm. We hopped in the truck and headed up to Buffalo to meet Chad's sister and her husband for Buffalo Wings (in Buffalo)! That night it rained well over an inch before it turned to snow with strong winds.

With all the rivers flooded we had no choice but to head south with a good haul of fish in our cooler. All my amazing drone footage was lost. But I still managed to make a watchable video. Looking forward to going back up there again!