Winter fish?

[Sheepdog8404]

It used to be common to get a hot winter (9-12#) steelie in November on the lower AR....

but the drought and Nimbus hatchery management have changed that.

In fact, the drought and warmer water and CDFW's intention and actions have been for the last many years to get away from the Eel R. strain and produce something closer to the original, summer-run steelies which existed pre-1955. It's not at all practical but neither is expecting a wild, coastal strain of fish to travel 100 miles through a warm, deoxygenated, silted in, polluted and damned/dammed watershed to get to a river flowing at 500 cfs to be spawned artificially or try and spawn in artificial redds composed of 50% cobbles and 50% silt in 1 ft of water while flossers, snaggers and poachers are trying to prevent them from doing so...

That said... fish your arse off and you WILL find that needle in a haystack as Jeff, Andy or Kranhold Bros would call it~

I keep trying to get out as often as possible to find that needle. It must be a tough year when even Andy and Mark K are having a difficult time finding some fish! Hopefully things will change very soon...

[Walter]

Unfortunately rivers like the Sacramento system have had like near 95% of outmigrating smolts die from at least two different years in a five year period. The fish are seriously Screwed.

[winxp_man]

With only 23 miles of river and no tributaries I don't know what kind of fish could make it much. The steelhead have to share the river with quite a few other species of animals and fish. Steelie, you and I once talked about this. And we both agreed that only so many numbers of fish can this river sustain. These fish need the cold stream water above Folsom

Hope something gets figured out...

[hwchubb]

Gary,

Most years - not last year, probably not this year - some of the biggest fish of the season would enter the hatchery in Dec, usually a lot of fish in there by Christmas. I raised, and failed to land, two at Arden last December, and I believe Andy G. found several last Dec, I'll let him fill in the details. They are there normally, but 5-600 cfs doesn't encourage me this year. Still, an hour on the water beats an hour not on the water.

Wayne