The Dam Salmon Fishery.

Here is the Inniscarra Dam Salmon fishery generating at over full load with two of the three sluices open. When this happens there is a very bad back eddy and with a lot of confused water about the salmon can be anywhere. The main run of water goes down the station bank and the back eddy runs all the way up the woodside thus making it very awkward to spin in as the spinner gets pulled in all directions and can get snagged up very fast. Amazingly the salmon can be facing downstream due to the conflicting eddies and currents, this can also be bad because the conflicting currents knock the spinner out of line and before you know it you are stuck in the bottom. Even when you connect with a salmon nine times out of ten you will lose the fish due to bad hook ups as the spinner is bouncing around in all directions and added to the mix bad water clarity. Having lost three salmon in a row, the third fish took hard and headed downstream and as there is no proper access to get downstream i clamped down on the line to try and get the fish to turn but it being a big fish it straightened the hooks and just kept going.

Having moved up a few yards i began to cover the near bank and met another salmon which gave a few strong runs before i took control of the situation and tailed the fish, unfortunately the spinner had been taken in too far and i had to take the salmon. You can see the state of the spinner in the video it was all mashed up and had been swallowed too far back its throat to be released, it was a fresh 11lb fish. Having only one large red barbless flying c spinner i fished on for awhile but not having a lot of confidence in the spinner i decided to call it a day. Must get some more large 25gr black and gold/ silver single barbless flying c's for the next time i hate being caught out with light baits in high water.