Sunday, June 26, 2011

I suck Sorry....

I haven't posted in an awhile as I have been crazy busy and I have taken over the Nor cal fishing report on the idylwilde flies blog (http://idylwilde.com/wordpress/) and that is a job in and of itself. The German and head of Idylwilde flies is a slave driver and if I don't get him a report each week he gets pretty pissed.

That said fishing has been steadily improving and for the most part been pretty good. There are some mountain streams out of chico that are fishing up hwy 32 (deer creek, butte creek, Big chico creek) and while a bit high clarity is good and the fish have to eat. The Lower Sac has been fishing fair to good for trout depending on the day, pretty typical summer fishing. Striper fishing has been picking up as the shad have thinned out and water has stabilized and warmed. The lower Yuba remains hopelessly high and will remain high for I imagine atleast through July.

Spent some time up at Clearwater lodge the last week and heading again tomorrow. Fall River has been fishing fair with the Hex hatch starting last week and gain strength daily. Pit 3 is fishable and cranking out good numbers even though the flows are high. Hat and Burney Creek are crowded but about the same as always. Good numbers of salmon and goldens coming off on both.

Looking forward to few days off next week and getting some striper fishing in on my own. I will get some pics up from my next Clearwater lodge stint late this week. Go fish this is the time to get out!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Late week pre weekend report

Been fishing and guiding all week. Poached a home development lake with my buddy Adam Grace on Wednesday and found good numbers of blue gill on beds and a few bass sitting on beds. I will say I was suprised to see bass off of beds as this is the first week of really warm weather and everything seems to be behind schedule with regards to fishing. The bass were right on schedule though. Off their beds, tough to catch as they were in post spawn into summer mode transition I think. Big colored up blue gills were willing which was fun.

Last two days chased stripers, Shad, Carp, and bass around on the Lower Sac outside of chico. Bass are still waking up it seems. I am perplexed as to what is happening with these guys as I have not seen any bass on beds and water temps are still pretty cold so not sure what they are up to or what is going to develop with them. Stripers are around in good numbers but the ones that we are catching are the ones that can't fit a 14" shad down their throat....schoolies in the 17-20" bracket. Fun but not big. Shad fishing was tough but improving the last few days with warmer weather, dropping flows, and warmer water temps. That said I have only caught small males and a few smaller females. This usually signifies the end of the run or dropping off of fishing, but who knows I could of just been fishing over a small pod.

Lower Sac trout fishing has been tough as flows are all over the place. Here is the release schedule for the next few days....this will tell you how the fishing will be.

06/11/2011 00:01 10650 cfs
06/11/2011 01:00 10400 cfs
06/11/2011 02:00 10150 cfs
06/11/2011 03:00 9900 cfs
06/11/2011 04:00 9700 cfs
06/11/2011 05:00 9500 cfs
06/11/2011 06:00 9300 cfs
06/13/2011 01:00 10000 cfs
06/14/2011 01:00 10500 cfs
06/14/2011 02:00 11000 cfs
06/14/2011 15:00 12500 cfs
06/14/2011 16:00 14000 cfs
06/14/2011 18:00 13650 cfs
06/14/2011 19:00 13310 cfs
06/14/2011 20:00 13000 cfs
06/14/2011 21:00 12675 cfs
06/14/2011 22:00 12360 cfs
06/14/2011 23:00 12055 cfs
06/15/2011 00:00 11755 cfs
06/15/2011 01:00 11465 cfs
06/15/2011 02:00 11180 cfs
06/15/2011 03:00 11000 cfs

Lower Yuba remains and seems to be climbing with the recent warm weather, up to 8000cfs today. Not really sure how the river is fishing as I haven't been on it but I know my buddy Ryan Johnston was catching fish about a week ago when the flows were around 5-6500cfs.

Anyhow I am just gonna keep pounding the water for stripers and waiting on the bass....once the North Fork feather comes into shape I am going to dust off the raft and life jacket and hit that. Hope everyone is well.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

update

Lots of water....I spent the weekend guiding on the L. Sac outside of chico. The original focus of the trips were to be shad but with the cold weather we abandoned that idea and focused on stripers and bass. It was a two boat trip both days and we found a few small mouth and stripers on the first day where warmer clear water was entering the river but day 2 the river blew out and we were forced deep into the sloughs. One nice thing about high water is that it provides access to sloughs and back waters that are usually not open. That said the water temps were still pretty cold and to catch any bass you had to hit them on the nose.

Monday I spent regrouping and working on my boat. Today I bought a new trolling motor and installed it. I did hit the river for a short evening excursion just to make sure all my electrical stuff on my boat worked. I don't do electrical stuff and was little worried when it came to installing a new trolling motor. River is blow out big time. Up to about 25,000cfs but from the looks of things it is dropping and by Friday releases out of Keswick are to drop down to 12,000cfs. So the river down through chico should come into shape by early next week. I did get deep into a few sloughs (about a mile back) and caught some nice bass on topwater and found a few laid up carp that showed a slight interest in my fly.

Back out on the river tomorrow through Sunday. I'll have some reports this weekend.