Anybody fish Streamers on Silver Fork?

[Sheepdog8404]

I have been fishing that river most of my life and have never had any results on fishing a small streamer. I have tried sculpins, buggers and some fry patterns with nothing to show for it. Granted most of the fish in that creek are small, enthusiastic dry fly eaters, I have never pulled a "bruiser" from it. And by bruiser I mean something in excess of 10". I have never really spent much time fishing streamers there due to the lack of action and it is quite hard to fish with them when trout all around you are jumping clear out of the water for a size 14 cream colored Mayfly.

I went up there yesterday afternoon and as soon as I got to the creek, the sky opened up. A relentless downpour for about 45 minutes was right over the canyon. I managed to go way up the creek and still catch a few fish but the water was slightly off color and tons of debris floating down river. On my way home, I stopped by a spot I love to fish down by where the road leaves the river before reconnecting to hwy 50 and the conditions were much worse. Maybe next time I'll check the forecast before I go...

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Over the years I met some people who really fished the Silver Fork of the American River a lot.

One of these guys said a size #12/14 black nymph was his favorite subsurface imitation.

[cdevine]

Never. I've used dries and hopper/dropper setups almost exclusively typically fishing a 3wt. But my success has been limited to 8-10 inch small wild fish. Maybe I got it all wrong? Honestly I've never met anybody who's caught anything of real size in that area. I don't know enough about it other than I hear a lot of the same things. "It looks a lot better than it fishes and i typically drive by it going to another spot"

Sorry about the downpour. Happened to me on the EW as well and I looked at the forecast.

[FlyFisher007]

Last year my wife and I caught 20-30 planters on bead head black buggers below the bridge at China Flat. She even tried an Elk Hair, but they wouldn't eat it unless she was stripping back under water, i'd never seen that before. Having said that, many years ago I hooked a small rainbow in one of the deeper pools between the campgrounds and my rod almost got pulled from my hands and my little rainbow was gone. Never saw what ate it, but I'm figuring it was a rather large Brownie!

[PV_Premier]

I went up there yesterday afternoon and as soon as I got to the creek, the sky opened up. A relentless downpour for about 45 minutes was right over the canyon. I managed to go way up the creek and still catch a few fish but the water was slightly off color and tons of debris floating down river. On my way home, I stopped by a spot I love to fish down by where the road leaves the river before reconnecting to hwy 50 and the conditions were much worse. Maybe next time I'll check the forecast before I go...

Explains why it was so off color when I was up there yesterday morning with the gf. Our tally: 0 fish, a handful of lost flies, one broken TFO rod. We quit after the latter and ended up at the brewery in P'ville for lunch. Don't know if it was just my perception or what but the water also seemed warm, I didn't bring a thermo. All in all an epic disaster of a fishing outing, at least until the beer started flowing.

Anyways on the topic of the thread, nope, never thrown a streamer up there and don't have any plans to. It's not like the NFYR where you might expect a big brown to come calling once a year in response to the efforts.

[Sheepdog8404]

I gotta say, all this intel on folks not doing it and not interested has really got my wheels turning... I might have to spend a day up there and only bring a streamer box. There HAS to be some meat eaters in there. It just doesn't make sense for there not to be a few larger predatory fish.

[cdevine]

If we were talking about the middle fork of the American buried in the canyon below Oxbow I would say you are 100% right. Big predatory fish roam those waters. I have my doubts about the area we are talking about. But hey why not try? Last week on the EW I was fishing almost all morning with nymphs and it was slow. Switched to streamers and it was game on. Doing the same thing expecting different results sometimes isn't very smart.

Pv- Man,,,, I feel for you. That sounds like it wasn't meant to be. At least you didn't lose your wallet or keys.

[PV_Premier]

Pv- Man,,,, I feel for you. That sounds like it wasn't meant to be. At least you didn't lose your wallet or keys.

S*** happens I guess. At least TFO has a decent enough warranty program, and the rod was fairly old so now gf has to decide whether to 'fix or replace'.

We also broke a reel on the McCloud last week but at least there we were catching fish! :p

[JasonB]

I gotta say, all this intel on folks not doing it and not interested has really got my wheels turning... I might have to spend a day up there and only bring a streamer box. There HAS to be some meat eaters in there. It just doesn't make sense for there not to be a few larger predatory fish.

Well chatting with Joe Shirshac, he told some stories of some large browns in there, mind you that was quite a few decades back he was talking about. Cool thing about tossing streamers is the potential for a big surprise; do it often enough and it happens. I kind of like not knowing just exactly who,what, where, and when. All part of the magic and excitement
JB