Feather River yesterday

[Adam Grace]

Yesterday I got the chance to fish, hang out with and catch up with my old friend Ryan Miller.



We used to work together at Fish First here in Chico while he guided for the shop. Now he's out guiding on his own. Ryan's been finding a bunch of fish on the Feather River. Ryan put us onto over 12 steelhead yesterday. We caught some smaller adults and some half pounders. Ryan is shocked by how many HP's his clients have been catching along with all the adult fish. Normally the Feather doesn't have HP's during this season. We were agreeing that they are fun, spunky little fish that fill in the gaps between adult steelhead. We both caught a few yesterday that were very hot and spunky, putting nice bends in our 7wts believe it or not!

here's some pictures:











We had a great time, my wrist is sore from all the fish.

[matt johnson]

Nice report Adam! Hopefully all those halfpounders are a sign of better adult returns in the Valley next year. Matt.

[Finsane]

Sweet job guys

[jhaquett]

Nice work man. The camera is working out great so far here in Fort Bragg.

[Adam Grace]

Great Josh, Enjoy!

We even tried our spey rods on the Feather, but no grabs. They were keying in on eggs and alevins.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

First class report guys.........

I think there are tons of fish in all the Valley rivers now.

There are resident Rainbow trout, Halfpounder Steelhead and some adult Steelhead too.

Your fly has to be in the water to catch them though.

[wjorg]

Not to poo on your parade, nice job of fishing, BUT...that second photo from the bottom seems to show the typical Wound inflicted by the bead rig.

The onlu thing good about beads is they stand up to abuse. If you go to the Kulik River in Alaska, where bead fishing was started by Craig Zeigler, the fish are missing their lips and faces.

[Trout Nut]

Not to make a huge point of it, but a safer way to fish beads than sliding them on the leader is to melt them onto the shank of the hook.

Just use your needle-nose pliers, etc, to hold the hook, flick on a bic lighter to heat the shank a few secs, and press the bead on from the top. Works great, and no fouled fish!!!

To make 100% sure the bead is on well, when you are done melting your selection of beads, whip up some epoxy and put a tiny bit in each groove that forms underneath the shank where you melted the bead.

Robert Johnson, Jr.
Alamo, CA

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

If you will look closely at photos from any popular trout fishery you will see the mandibles missing on many fish, especially the old/big ones. This happens in most any fishery where fish are hooked and released a lot. Most popular trout fisheries are fished with the dead drift double nymph systems. Fish must be getting hooked on the mandibles with nymphs too.

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I do see the "flossing" effect of pegged beads though. I guess the fish eats the pegged bead then gets hooked on the outside of the mouth.

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I would appreciate it if we all would realize that no one has the answers to this or many of life's questions so let not be so opinionated or one sided.

Let try to be open minded and have effective discussions. I can see how this one could get out of hand.

[Adam Grace]

Here's the head shot, incredibly blown up, to show you that the hook entered from the inside of the mouth, trust me, none of our fish were hooked on the outside of the mouth.



Ryan and I talked quite a bit that day about pegging beads. We talked about the percentages of foul hooked or outside hooked fish compared to regular (inside) mouth hooked fish. Since Ryan guides both the Feather and the Lower Sacramento he has quite a bit of experience with pegging beads. He rarely sees a foul hooked fish, he even commented that he has seen more "butt hooked" fish more than outside mouth hooked fish, and anyone can "butt hook" a fish with any type of fly.

We talked about how high you need to place the bead, he rigs them a little over an inch above the hook. We both agreed that guys that peg the bead much higher have a much higher chance to improperly hook the fish, and that it was those guys who gave pegging a bead the bad reputation that it has.

Based on Ryan's studies (watching real eggs floating under water) he told me that real eggs flutter and bounce around under water and that hooks with melted beads, hooks with dumbell eyes or eggs with beads don't flutter like pegged beads. Ryan even noticed that a toothpick pegged bead is more neutrally buoyant making it act more like a real egg than those that are looped or tied onto the tippet, yet the toothpick can damage the tippet faster.

This day he looped the tippet around the bead 3 times to hold it in place instead of using a toothpick. It worked very well. Ryan is a great guide and I totally trust his experiences with this technique.

Once again, we never improperly hooked any of our fish that day, IMHO if you peg the bead close to the hook you will rarely improperly hook the fish. AND pegging beads is a very effective way to imitate eggs.

Like Bill said, to each their own.