American Half-pounders

[JMKiernan]

Hey Guys,
Curious if these high flows have pushed any half pound steelhead up at all? Too early?

[Darian]

Not sure if this helps or not.... Was out last Thursday on a Striper trip on the river from Howe down to the mouth. The weather was overcast, cool/breezy. Lots of insect activity (BWO/caddis). No sign of rising fish. Maybe higher up???

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Traditionally we get the Spring Half-pounder run in March/April and the Fall Half-pounder Steelhead run in late August/September.

We do seem to have some Steelhead in the river almost year round though.

Summer Steelhead are thought to enter the lower reaches of many long drainages on the west coast around the 4th of July.

In the warm weather I would go to a heavily oxygenated deep fast riffle at "dark thirty" (5:00am) and swing a dark wet fly on a floating line.

.

[Mrs.Finsallaround]

Summer Steelhead are thought to enter the lower reaches of many long drainages on the west coast around the 4th of July.

Hi guys!

Been a while since I've been on here, but wanted to go fish somewhere this weekend, so I was checking to see what everyone was up to.

Paul and I actually saw some fairly large fish 'jumping' or 'rolling' - couldn't decide which - around 8 pm right on the seam at Discovery Park on the 4th. These had to be at least 24"... at first, we thought they were salmon (already?), but now Paul's thinking that maybe they were these summer steelhead you've mentioned....

Thoughts?

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

In a big long vast drainage like the Sacramento River we get runs of salmon and steelhead at many different times of year.

Before the dams it must have been wild as long as there was water.

I did hear that lots of the river in the valley dried up or at least were low and warm in the summer before we had so many dams.

The lower reaches of these rivers were loaded with small mouth bass.

Above were the dams are now is where the small baby salmon and steelhead lived in the cool trout water.

Before the dams we had summer steelhead that came in in the high water of spring and lived all summer in deep shaded spring feed holes up on our trout streams.

.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Wonderful info Dennis......

[kylgrn]

• Gasoline to drive to Klamath or Rogue rivers - $120
• Two night stay at local motel - $160
• Food at the local breakfast and dinner cafe - $100
• Knowing when and where the fish are in the river – priceless
• or maybe the price of one copy of The Half-Pounder, A Steelhead Trout Life History and Fly Fishing.

Bill, thank you for the kind comments,

Dennis

I've got every one of these down except for the "where the fish are in the river", can't seem to nail that one down.