Spey for Salmon on the AR

Good evening folks.

I spent almost 80% of my day today trying to figure out how to achieve the depth to reach the salmon. I have caught one salmon on the swing, in the very very early morning at the ring of fish on for the alarm to start fishing, last year.

I am using either a 7wt 13' echo tr2 or a 10' 8" 5wt echo switch. I just got 12.5' of t8 which touched bottom at river bend today fishing from the island stream outlet down into the tail out. That's a first for me to grab a structure or object on bottom ever.

I have been using the opst dual density s5/s6 at 12.5' and never grabbed bottom.

So now I've figured out the sink tip depth for current flows, what do I need to swing for the salmon run? I've tried leeches with local bugs off the hook bend. Simple orange and white spey pattern, purple and blue,purple,pink...

Something has to get them to get mad enough to go and grab...

About 15 years ago we had a good fall run of King salmon in the lower American river.

October can be good but more salmon are in the river in November.

I know that Andy Guibord, Joe Shirshac and Chuck Campana, all from Kiene's Fly Shop, were catching them.

They were wading at River Bend Park (Goethe Park) below the walk over bridge on the park side.

Joe and Chuck are both gone now so I would go see Andy at Kiene's, maybe on the weekend?

I think they were using single hand 9 weight rods with some kind of sink-tip with maybe small egg imitations?

I'd say some type of egg color could trigger a hit, orange and white may look like a sack of eggs?

Chartreuse in the tanks

Used to fish out of my pram at the Fair Oaks Bridge using a type 6 sinking line with a gold comet but that was 40 years ago.

Gordon Langenbeck has a large old data base where for years when he live in Sacramento he collected fly fishing info.

He gave me a printed version which I still have, somewhere?

Gordon would collect fishing reports from many top fly fishers and put them in his data base.

It was exciting for me to read it.......