McCloud river streamers

[tcorfey]

Sounds like you got it, for streamers I will usually swing and depending on the river conditions use a floating line or intermediate line with tips made of T11 from 2' long to 10' long with a 5' leader. I will also vary the weight of my streamers using different size cones from no cone to large cone. If fishing tubes than also use tube body weights in different sizes/weights. I will also swing large wet flies or nymphs. Largest Brown I caught on the McCloud I got many years ago right in the middle of Ah-di-nah campground, swinging a double tungsten Pheasant tail nymph tied on a size 8 streamer hook.

[Jcolin]

Good luck, but note that unless something changed on the regs this year, the lower part of the McCloud doesn’t open until late April.

Lower mccloud is now open year round. The regulations actually changed last year for the 21 season.

[PV_Premier]

Interesting thanks. I wonder how the search and rescue groups felt about that decision—that road can be gnarly in summer and probably downright dangerous in winter if it snows or gets a heavy rain. Anyways I digress. Good luck to the Op and look forward to hearing about the early spring streamer bite.

[Rossflyguy]

From what you are saying, it sounds as if I'm set up pretty well. I most often start my casts with a roll cast. I have all the teeny lines and also several different full sink lines. I'll typically go with a 5' leader subsurface. I'm glad that you pointed these things out because I didn't even think to mention them.

Thank you Rossflyguy

On the McCloud I use the 24’ Rio integrated sink line 250grain to 300 grain depending how quick the river is and how deep of a hole I’m fishing. Those are thrown on a 7wt rod or fast action 6wt. I strip it back for the action. There are some huge Browns in that river. I’ve seen a double digit fish in that water that I thought was a king salmon when they were talking about putting winter run king salmon in the McCloud for the recovery program that never happened. Obviously it wasn’t. I’ll never forget that fish. That one fish made me do lots of research to try and find other access points to fish untouched areas of that river. There’s a lot of fire roads all over that place. If you can get to the McCloud above the reservoir there’s some big fish in that river too. Black, olive, and grizzly colors for the streamers work best for me. Hike as far as you can to fish water that’s not normally fished if you want best results. I’ve spoke to a biologist who’s done research on the McCloud. He told me most of the Browns start showing up in June/July from the lake. I’m sure there are lots of resident Browns too. I’m not too sure if most go back to the lake when it’s cooler and feed in the shad and Kokanee. Good luck.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

The McCloud, Pit and Sacramento rivers above Shasta lake are all three amazing freestone wild trout streams with their own personalities.

All three being above Shasta lake is a very positive influence on their fisheries.


I had a long special relationship with the Upper Sac because we had a cabin there in Dunsmuir and I grew up with veteran guide Fred Gordon in south Sacramento.


My brother Dick actually discovered the Pit river at Deep Creek camp ground for us and over the next 40 years we had some of our best trout fishing there.

Sadly, I only fished the lower McCloud river a handful of times but I know a lot about it from others who almost lived on it.