Bill Kiene semi-retired
09-26-2012, 09:14 AM
My old budy Mike Mercer @ The Fly Shop in Redding once told me his favorite month on the Lower Sac was October.
If you want to catch some big 15 to 20 inch and larger wild Rainbow trout, this is the river in Nor Cal. It is almost like fishing for small/medium size Steelhead.......
Most fish it in the fall, winter and spring depending on the flows. Mid-summer it is very hot there and most go up into high elevations at that time.
It always had a good population of trout but back some years ago they put a devise, shutters?, on Shasta Dam to control the water temperiture in the river below for the health of the salmon.
This helped the bug life and the native trout and the steelhead as well.
When the flows are lower, under 7,000 cfs?, you can do some wading but to see the river at it's best I would hire one of the veteran drift boat guides for your first day on that river.
There are steelhead and salmon in there now too.
My favorte guide up there is my old friend Fred Gordon of Dunsmuir:
http://www.fredgordon.net/OLD/guide2local2.html
.
If you want to catch some big 15 to 20 inch and larger wild Rainbow trout, this is the river in Nor Cal. It is almost like fishing for small/medium size Steelhead.......
Most fish it in the fall, winter and spring depending on the flows. Mid-summer it is very hot there and most go up into high elevations at that time.
It always had a good population of trout but back some years ago they put a devise, shutters?, on Shasta Dam to control the water temperiture in the river below for the health of the salmon.
This helped the bug life and the native trout and the steelhead as well.
When the flows are lower, under 7,000 cfs?, you can do some wading but to see the river at it's best I would hire one of the veteran drift boat guides for your first day on that river.
There are steelhead and salmon in there now too.
My favorte guide up there is my old friend Fred Gordon of Dunsmuir:
http://www.fredgordon.net/OLD/guide2local2.html
.