Great start to Fall Fishing

[RJSFLYTRIP]

It seems like these days I'm having a hard time trying to find the space to update my fishing reports. Between the kids, wife, guiding, and Cast Hope I don't find much time for writing anymore. Here I sit at the computer with all 3 of my girls sleeping at the same time so I thought I would give you guys an update of what I am seeing out on the water. I hope all of you are doing well and I will be seeing you around the river. Cheers and Go Chargers!

Lower Sac: The Sac has been good for egg fishing lately. I wouldn't say it is great but there are lots of big fish to be caught right now. Currently most days we are hooking 40-50 fish throughout the entire river. There are a decent amount of salmon throughout the river. However fish are still eating nymphs as they look for those eggs. Currently about 25% of my fish are coming on bugs. Hot flies are eggs, tan fox poopah, and Hogans S&M.

Lower Feather: The Feather is having a slower start to the season this year as compared to the last couple. There are good numbers of salmon in low flow but none in high flow. So right now there are not many steelhead to be had past the outlet. With the larger number of salmon in the Low Flow section I have been fishing 1 single egg as not to snag salmon on every cast. Currently the majority of the fish that we are catching are wild fish. So expect the major push of hatchery fish to show up at their normal time near the first part of November.

Lower Yuba: I haven't been over there yet this October to do any egg fishing. But it sounds like fishing has been fair to good. I will be over there on Tuesday and should have some better reports at the end of the week.

Fish Story: I had a really crazy experience happen to me in late September. I had a client land a 40lb striper on a rubber leg while fishing for trout below Red Bluff. Cant believe that we landed this fish on 2X with a size 8 stone fly nymph. Must have just hit the fish on the nose. The fish was 44.5" long with a 29" girth. It was an amazing experience holding this fish and reviving it to let it swim back into the depths. Craziness!!!!

9787

For those of you that are looking to get on the water. Here are my openings:

Dec 1-12, 14-23.

December egg bite can be awesome on the Lower Sac and Yuba. By that point in time everyone is focused on the steelhead rivers and all of the valley trout get ignored. If you hit some good cloudy weather then it can be game on during that time frame.

[trouterfan1]

That is one heck of a striper! Catching it with an unorthodoxed method (trout setup) makes it memorable I'd say for sure! That along with its sheer size. I also agree with you...GO CHARGERS!!!

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

My friend Ron Hayashi caught a 40 pound plus Striper many years ago while fly fishing for American Shad at the mouth of the Feather River.

I was a line class record for some time.

[steveg137]

All I can say is that is epic.
I can't imagine what I'd have thought hooking never mind landing that fella on fly set up.

[amoeba]

Well, I can vouch for the Yuba yesterday (10/18/14) - the water was still on the warm side (61-62 at Hallwood, and that on a cooler day than recently), and some spawning but not much - as its a scientific fact that any eggs laid in those temperatures are going to have near 100% mortality. Seems like the fish know that too and most are waiting to spawn.

I picked up some tiny trout on a tan bird's nest in the fastest, girgling water. Zip on eggs anywhere. Clouds of caddis buzzing around my head near dark but zero surface action - not one ripple. Mosquitos were feeding on me, however.

Looks like the word is out - since there was nobody else fishing - looks like it's all yours until I hear different.

[mattv-mcfly]

Well I had the opposite on the Yuba yesterday. The fishing was good. I hooked 3 14"+ trout in one run on egg patterns in the morning. I had my little brother with me and was teaching him how to fly fishing so I didn't get to fish much. I'm sure I would have caught more if I was able to cover more water.

There were significantly less anglers out there than last weekend though. I saw 5 anglers in one run about 200ft long last weekend. Everyone probably went to fish the Feather.
Less people = less crowded = better fishing in my opinion.

[amoeba]

Hells bells:

Thanks for the post, however, it created a flash-mob yesterday (tuesday); I lost count of the number of cars out there after seeing over half a dozen at dawn at both Hammon and Parks Bar. I would say there were 30 anglers out there, but not bunched anywhere. I didn't catch a cold; didn't see a trout caught, and didn't hear a story of one caught. I tried eggs for 4 hours of all sorts, and zip. Tried some nymphs and zip.

I saw two eagles - adults. Do not remember seeing these here before. Perhaps displaced from a reservoir in the sierras or come in to eat the fish carcasses.

Oh yeah. Water temperatures still high (59 in morning), and more redds near Parks than Hammon, mostly at the edges.

So where's RJ's report - he was supposed to be there yesterday?

[mattv-mcfly]

Whoops didn't mean to do that haha. Thats a lot of folks fishing the Yuba for a weekday. I must have figured something out about the Yuba that I guess I should just keep it to myself.
I would love to see an RJ report.
Hope you get into some Yuba fish soon amoeba. Cheers!

[amoeba]

Tell that to the fish:

Whatever you did to catch 3 big fish - - - - ain't the average (now remember, I caught 3 too, but the largest was 8 inches) - - - the technique you have with eggs - - - - seems to be pretty safe for now. Anyone else?

We'll see what gives with the rain this weekend.....if we get more spawning, bug hatch, and/or color in the water, or trout action.

[yubaman]

Fished the Yuba yesterday. Cloud cover certainly helps during the eggbite. Leaving specifics out, I will just say that the fishing was very good. Three of the keys I find during egg bite for me are (a) eggs ahead of bobber, (b) line tight to eggs (even if they drag the bobber a bit) so you can feel the grabs immediately, and lastly, stick and move. Cover a lot of water. You get 3-4 drifts per redd, then it's time to move on. you've either already caught 1-2, missed them, or they've wisened up and won't take. There were a number of people out yesterday, but if you avoid the popular areas for egg bite, you can get good fishing and avoid the crowds. Eggs and dropper produced. Golden Stones and Rubberlegs for dropper. I saw one boat and one other fisherman yeaterday. Many more people upriver aways.

[RJSFLYTRIP]

The single day that I was on the Yuba was the 14th of October. Fishing was good. Not lots of salmon anywhere in the river. Just enough in each redd to get a few fish off of each of them. I only fished eggs and concentrated in the shallow water. We ended up hooking 25-30 fish by the end of the day. The Yuba Man is totally correct you have to cover lots of water to have a big day there. Generally speaking I would recommend having your flies land upstream of your indicator so that way you are tight the entire time. The other thing this time of year is that most people think strikes are the bottom. Often times strikes are fast and subtle and then other wicked hard. Just really depends on the fish. If you cast around a redd and all of sudden the indicator starts bouncing up river then you have to swing no matter if the indicator goes under the water or not. You definitely want to fish a really tight line. Don't worry about the perfect drift when fishing around redds as the grabby fish will jump on it right off the bat.

The rest of the month I have been on the Lower Sac and Feather. The Sac has been really good and the Feather not so much. In my opinion the Feather is fishing really average or below average. We need some new fish to move into the high flow. Its a ghost town down there right now.

Hope all of you guys are well.

RJ