Putah Creek as it flows into Lake Solano......

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

........has some big fish in it. I guess that would be too easy as it is less than an hour from Sacramento?

http://www.kiene.com/images/putahbrown.jpg

I have fish this water sense 1965 and have never taken one this big. I have friends that have though.

Most will have to go to New Zealand for a wild Brown trout this size?

Photo by Mark Thompson, Saturday, May 14, 2005. It was released and is still there.

[andanb]

I like fishing that area, but I like Bill have never caught anything that big 20-21" is the largest. What were you using? Were you swinging buggers or zonkers? Were you nymphing? What weight rod were you using? (I was looking for the green eyed envy emoticon)

[flygolf]

Using buggers on a 4 weight. Caught a lot of the plants and missed another big fish. This one was caught by my buddies dad that I took out. First time fly fishing, first fish, only fish. Guess what he wants for fathers day? :mrgreen:

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

That is a wonderful fish and great photo.

My friend Al Hulbert has a 10# Rainbow trout mounted in his office that he landed doing about the same thing down by the bridge. It was at least 20 years ago. I might find a picture of it.

What fly do you use? Size and color?

How did you get started doing this?

We use to float that stretch in our round float tubes in the '70s.

I wish they would let us use electric motors in there on our prams.

[Ryan]

I just fished Lake Solano last week with my pontoon boat for the first time this year. I basically just rowed my buddies around and watched them catch fish. I have a two man pontoon boat, and two friends, so they just took turns on who goes next. One of the guys never fly fished before, and he picked up a few hatchery fish.

Anyways, with all my new higher visibility thing w/the pontoon boat compared to a float tube, I was able to see what goes on at the bottom of the river. Flows were about 250cfs, so it was sort of low. I saw schools of probabley 20 hatchery fish at a time... I saw some huge carp... I saw a nice probabley 20" brown... and four largemouth bass spawning! There was a small gravel patch and as I looked at it closer, there were four bass swimming and doing their thing in the current. These guys were in the 4-5 lb class too! How cool is that? I have heard stories of bass in there, but never believed them. I realize that I will probabley never see this again, or it will be a long time untill I do. As for the fishing, the dry fly fishing hasn't picked up like I hoped it would, but we did do good trolling and stripping olive and black wholly buggers in size 10's on an I line. Fun stuff, and what a fish on the first report! I hope I can get a fish like that someday... what amazing colors! Good Job. And good luck to anyone who goes up there expecting to catch a fish like that! :lol:

[SullyTM]

Hey Ryan...Looks like you fish Putah on a semi-regular basis...I've only been there once and will be getting up there in the near future. I don't have a boat or float tube so I was wondering where the decent wading areas are. Any suggestions. I've been to all 5 Public Access areas so at least I won't get lost. What flies do you recommend? Thanks. SullyTM