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For all you Chrome addicts
As we all know, hunting for chrome or trout right now just isn’t in the lineup for our weekly ritual due to the high blow out flows of every CA River.
Well I just couldn’t take the cabin fever anymore. 2 weeks of tying, canceling trips, more trying and playing an occasional video game just wasn’t cutting the cheddar anymore. I had enough.
Caledl up a good fishing buddy and fellow guide and said dude we have to get out, and he agreed. We had planned on going to Idaho to pick up his new Hyde and fish the Henrys Fork, but our return over the pass on Friday wasnt going to be very pretty. So we decided to stay local. Not the easiest to figure out, but I knew we could do it. So we pondered, put our thinking caps on and with our knowledge of CA we put a list of rivers together, with flows, type of fish, current and future weather forecast and tried to figure things out. I have to admit it wasn’t easy. The Valley Rivers are done, the southern rivers are done, the coastals are a no go, east walker blown, I mean come on mother nature give us a break. So after a half a day we found a few rivers that had fishable flows, but with a front moving in quickly it only gave us one river we could successfully fish. There wasn’t much time, we only had a 2 day maybe 3 if we are lucky to fish before this front moves in and blows this river out too.
Let’s just say I love this river. We get there and the suns out, slight green ting to the water, the conditions were perfect, considering we left rain and wind. We park on rivers edge and there are already fish actively feeding on the surface. What more could we ask for. We took an on the stream Makers Mark Whiskey shot and it was on from there. Started hooking fish right off the bat on dry, nothing of great size, but on drys none the less and considering everything is blown out it was awesome. Not to long after our initial dry fly action, I decided to nymph a run and hooked up with something that bolted like a freight train, didn’t know what it was till it JUMPED!!!!!!! Bright and Chrome oh my. Is that a steelhead? Is that an adipose? Sure was. Got it to hand and it was a nice 20" Chrome Bright Wild Steelhead with sea lice. Yes sea lice, not white like most think, straight up black sea lice. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With that said I started swing some streamers, which my buddy started off with, he had one fish just whack the crap out of him, but never stayed on, a few other tugs from both of us but nothing to hand.
Decided to move down river and that was our best plan ever. River was a bit more green but 3-4' viz which made the fishing in my mind even better. Right off the bat we started hooking fish. Mostly smaller fish with a few big boys mixed in between. We fished this spot 2 days straight and it produced 4 Bright Chrome steelhead 3 of which were wild, as well as a few other wild fish from 18-28".
The best fish of the trip, not the biggest but the best fighting was one that my buddy hooked. He was working the drop off above me and next thing I hear is..... OH SH-T this is a toad, and here comes a mid 20" dime bright steelie 4ft out of the water and booking downstream. With what seemed for ever we finally landed this beautiful fish.
All in all we planned this trip just right, we wished we went up on Monday and fished through till Wednesday, but Tues Weds for us was just fine. Thursday the river was blown out, so we did a nice hearty farewell breakfast and called it a trip.
2 Days, 5 steelhead over 20"s 4 being wild, crap load of smaller fish under 18"s and a few other trout ranging 18-28".
Here is some FISH PORN for all of our sore eyes to enjoy.
I can only add 5 photos per post, so ill add the rest below.
