yes Pafisher = Jack..
time for me to go explore how the resident carp are doing.. um 6wt this time ? They almost shattered the 4 wt last year..

If you arent gonna be on the river more than a day or two here and there the DSR is most certainly your best bet- despite the pay to play.
 Some here are on the river regularly throughout the season or year and therefore can move about looking and hunting at their leisure despite how the fish are affected by crowds.
  Havent been to DSR for a few years but when I had only one or two trips a year it was always where I started each day. Gotta up the odds and go for the fresh ones.
 Not only the fresh unmolested and more likely to bite Kings  but you may well get into a push of new Hos or Steel too.
 Hope you and your Son pound them and remember to make your reservations early- Places are likely already starting to fill up. That includes reserving a tag on the DSR too.

neaphyte

I have no intention of keeping any fish. And Jack would be Pafisher?? Forgive my ignorance.  The only thing I'm interested in is how he goes about it.  I'll figure out the where. Thanks guys.

 
It's not rocket science,just get your fly down in front of them with a natural drift.Use only enough weight to get it in the lower column of water so it is right in their face.Keep your rodhand in constant contact with your line to feel the take,many times it's subtle.
Most important IMO is color,there are days that one color is the one they want and it'll be slow going if you don't use it.Just last season I was fishing to many active salmon and getting few takes.Then I remembered seeing a picture on here with a salmon that took a BLUE fly.That brought back a memory of a past trip that I was having good success with a blue eztes egg fly.I just happened to have some with me and tied one on,as soon as I made a drift I had a hit.Probably played with 20-30 fish after that all on blue.A week later I was on the same water and started with blue,nothing doing.Wound up finding black/dark flies/streamers were what they wanted and had fish on constantly for 5 straight days,left the river bone tired but happy
Ive been fishing the tribs for 30+ years and have learned that you need a variety of flies in every color you can think of,I  go up there with probably 1000 flies!Now I'm not saying you have to have that but that is what I accumulated over the years.Flies you should have would be:wooly buggers in black,olive,brown,chartruse.Bucktail streamers or any others wth a variety of color.Large dark stone flys.Glo bugs in pink,oregeon cheese,chartruse,natural egg.Astez eggs in blue,chartruse ,black,olive,orange,etc.Just have lots of colors,I forgot red and that can be good at times.Well I think you get the idea,color is important.
Where to fish?Well I never leave the "zones" during salmon season and I'm too frugal to spend $50 to fish the DSR.However,the DSR can be gangbusters when there is a run moving through,but there are days that the fish are few down there and it'll be $50 for nothing.

I second what PA said.  I was fortunate enough to fish DSR Sept. 11-14 during the epic run last year, each day the fish showed interest in a different color and pattern.  Orange comets were the hot ticket the first two days and pink, chartreuse, red, blue estaz eggs & sucker spawn the later part of the bonanza.  While I don't normally fish DSR the reports of last year's early run were too good to ignore (thanks Drew). 

I'll start sorting and tying in July......and that is coming quickly!

Thanks gentlemen, all of you, especially Pafisher. Your congeniality  is refreshing. I might even go back to reading and contributing to some of the fishing forums I had in the past.  If any of you guys leave from central Pa to head north Oct thru April let me know, we'll share a ride and some fishing "secrets".  Here's my tip. If you have a farm pond in the area go up and ask permission to fish it. Finally persuaded my son to do it last summer and now were fishing three  local ponds, (when were not trout fishing,) and were having a ball catching huge panfish and the  occasional bass on poppers.
 
I'm sure I will have more streamer/swing questions as we get closer to Sept.   Thanks again!

Much as with the Liesering Lift when working a wet fly but more across and up.
Takes can come anywhere from the deaddrift to the hangdown with most of them coming on the start of the swing.
My guess is that salmonids eyes being on the side of the head see indpendently,much like a horse, and as it swings thru their vision it speeds up ,vanishes and appears as something running away when the other eye picks it up and being top line preditors their muscle memory won't let them not try to catch it.
 
As to what has been said about subtle biting.
I have posted before about watching kings peel up from the school and follow flies downriver nipping them several times without ever feeling a touch.
It is intrigueing to know just how little of what is going on with out drifts. 

During the run I alluded to in my previous post I watch a male King salmon turn and crush a magenta estaz fly no more than eight feet in front of me.  This fish moved laterally six feet to take the fly and it was truly an amazing sight to behold.   

A little more on color and how crazy it can be.Maybe 20 yrs ago we were fishing the UFZ by the upper wire.The water was very high and you had to be carefull wading even next to shore on the parking lot side.Again through some trial and error we discovered the fly of the day was the black wooly bugger,it was if we were throwing meat to hungry sharks,we were constantly into fish.After that trip I decided I needed lots of those buggers for the next season and tied maybe 50 -60 that summer before we went again.Well when we got there I was ready with my buggers.......not a hit,they were not interested Eventually we found what they wanted but it sure was n't black buggers.It was a variety of things that year!

Been there done that.
One streamer has been consistantly effective over a 30 year period for me.
Pretty sure a guy called waDerboy posted a picture here a while back.
Of course there was a long time in the middle of that 30 years when I didn't fish for kings.