Homeward Bound Salmon

I want to share these pics from a day of fishing this Fall that I found myself putting the fly rod down alot to capture this stunning low water salmon movement. This occurs during conditions that only mother nature can control or predict but when it does happen, the sights we see can be jaw dropping. I jumped on an opportunity to capture this with my camera and for once, not my fishing pole, not knowing if they would come out or not. My trusty camera came through! Covering this event really made me think about the life and cycles of a salmon and how the last part of it's life journey may be the most dramatic of all their cycles in life.

Our story begins there, near the end of the salmons life journey

Imagine if you will that you are a salmon heading home through a large deep river bound only to the end of your journey, born in some small stream that drains into this great imaginary super salmon highway. Arriving closer to your home stream you pull into tide water and see the tails of thousands of your brothers and sisters waiting in a large pool somewhere near the tides head. The smells of home have become strong for you now. You rest for a few peaceful days having already come a long ways from the deep blue oceans now far away. Strange feelings and instincts mucking about, you feel changes taking place as natures anxiety builds.



At the top of a morning tide several days later an anxious brother from the front of the pack circles the riffle at the head of the pool to scout for confidence and then commits. Blasting with all the determination in life straight out of the hole, leaving all others behind with the feeling that it must be time.



Brother works his way up through the shallows carefully. Not fear but purpose and instinct, to complete your lifes journey at all cost and in all condition. All the fish around you begin to mill around in circles to wake and ready themselves for the last big push. Not long after brothers departure others begin to leave in pairs and in small groups, fully commited.



Both Pressure and confidence to move onward is building inside of you, is this your tide? It is very shallow but the others, they are going! Forces of nature over take your sense and you will go...........



There is no stopping now. there is no turning back, only the last push to the final destination....Home. You will now work again for days making your way through your home stream, picking your tail through the rocks like a chain gang worker. Swimming through tiny side channels and under logs that lay across the stream. A gaunlet of hungry human anglers also await your arrival.





The big push is in full swing now and you are simply another pea in the pod. You are no longer yourself. Nature has put you on an instinctual auto pilot, no GPS necessary. Some struggle, some will make it while others lacking natures drive will turn back for another wait in tidewater.



Not you though, you made your commitment and your going the distance with brother and the others. Although your strength wavering slightly you continue onward with no cognition. Only the hydrodynamic world you live in to guide you now, you must follow the waters strongest flow or you might beach!





After several days of travel you and the others reach the top. A sense of slowing takes over when you smell natures next cycle in the water flowing through your gills. Now stacking numbers of developing salmon again fill the small pools in this little stream, to wait yet again. Pairing will now take place over the next few days. Your journey was long and tiresome. You made it through all of lifes cycles and stages and all of its dangers for this time in your life. Time to continue the cycle again for future generations of salmon. It is your turn to find a mate as well but for now, a little rest........




Photos & Story by Matthew Clark


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