Fall River

[Bruce Slightom]

I was on Fall River for five days last week. Catching was tough. There are not alot of weeds in the river, mostly in front of Christensen's and Zug Bug. I did not see any pods of fish any where and the hatches were very slim. The river is on the dirty side. I did not fish below the Whipple Ranch and fished about a mile or so above Spring Creek. The further I went up stream the more fish I ran into. One norning there was a good spinner fall (BWO's) coming out of Spring Creek. I was on the water before 6 each morning and most of the fish I caught were before 9:00AM. The winds were brutal. Almost everyone was stripping leaches. Most of the fish I got were on the swing with nymphs. Very few fish on drys. I was only able to fish one evening that the wind laid down and there were no caddis at all. In the afternoons I fished Hat Creek. I think that the fish have not dropped down into the main river below Spring Creek yet and that the good fishing is a few weeks away. If I was to go back anytime soon I would think about fishing up stream maybe at Spiner Fall Lodge (Rick's). All that being said it was a good trip and a special place.

[JerryInLodi]

My brother-in-law and I fished the Fall on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was an absolutely miserable windy cold day. A sparse infrequenes hatch came off about noon but most of the fish totally ignored it. We ended up with 14 fish for the day, the largest 19 inches, all caught on either flashback PT nymphs or olive wooly buggers.

Sunday was one of those magic days, the barometer was rising, the day slowly warmed, enough cloud cover to prevent the emerging bugs from drying out and NOTHING!!! No hatches, no rising fish, if we didn't know better we would have sworn there were no fish in the river. We ended up with two fish for the day, one on a woolly bugger, one on a flashback nymph. Of the ten or so boats we talked to, our two fish were the only ones caught!

Not being masochists we headed for Bum on Monday for a few hours before driving home and slammed the planters using olive woolly buggers. Not much skill involved but very good for the ego.