Archive for the 'Fishing Reports' Category
Ran into a old friend today, Mark used to be a guide up here but in recent years has been putting his General Contractors license to use down south. Now he just comes up for a fishing trip now and then. “Let’s hit the lake” he says, and I, being really hard to talk into going fishing, says OK.
So after he finished his power nap on Mt Shasta (6,800 FT is a good elevation for a power nap I guess) we met at the Lake for a little Bass fishing.
I have said it before, but it bears repeating, throwing poppers for Smallmouth on a fly rod is a kick.
It was a bit windy at the start of the afternoon fishing, but Siskiyou has plenty of coves where you can get out of the wind. Of course the wind has a propensity to change direction as the evening progresses, so you have to switch coves occasionally to stay out of it.
Fishing was very good. The smallmouth were plenty willing to grab our Poppers. I was fishing the venerable Yellow Styrofoam Popper, which can be picked up at the local Walmart or sporting goods store for around a buck a dozen, while Mark was fishing a soft foam chartreuse popper. Did not seem to matter much. We were fairly well splitting the fish between us despite the fact that he was in the front of the boat and thus was getting first shot at the water. I overcame his advantage in position with a better understanding of the proper popper movement to trigger the hits. Not that we were competing or anything like that. Ahem, but I did take the evening big bass award, only to have Mark take the daily big fish award with a very nice 16-17″ Rainbow that decided to take his chartreuse popper. Silly fish, poppers are for Bass.
But that is not unusual for Lake Siskiyou. Right at dark, the trout will start feeding on the surface, and there is always the odd one that forgets he is feeding on midges, caddis, or mayflys and takes a popper. I have hooked some really nice Browns on Siskiyou that way.
The big bass of the evening was 12 1/2 inches. While Siskiyou is a great bass fishery, it does not produce many large smallmouth, I have caught smallies in the lake up to around 18″ but 9-11 inchers are much more common. Last year was a very good year size wise and we were getting good numbers of fish in the 14-16 inch range.
Since I have only done two trips to the lake so far this year it is too soon to tell if that will repeat.
Siskiyou is one of the rare lakes (at least in Northern California) that has a slot limit. You are not suppose to keep any smallie between 12 and 15 inches. Unfortunately there is very little public awareness of the slot limit and I suspect it is regularly ignored.
Some of the old timers around here tell me that the size of the bass runs in cycles. You will have several years of small fish that will eventually grow, and then you have a few years of good fish, then it will got back to a bunch of small fish. Anyone else hear of this kind of thing? I don’t know if that is indicative of a lake that is a bit over-populated or it just means that the majority of the fish are all the same age so they all die off of old age around the same time. It does not sound like that should happen in a natural population, but the smallies in Siskiyou are a imported non-native fish so they are not a natural population.
Don’t like the weather, wait a while it will change.
Published June 5, 2007 Fishing Reports 1 CommentWow, a little over a week ago, we were in a heat wave and getting into the 90’s. Talk about a change.
Weather today was cool and cloudy with a bit of rain. Temps have dropped dramatically, making it nice to have a good rain jacket on. Next two days are suppose to the coolest with temps in the high 60’s to low 70’s. Gonna stay cloudy all week they say, but it will warm up by the week-end.
Absolutely the best weather for fly fishing.
Yep, cool and cloudy, a little rain, add a nice hatch and it can provide all day dry fly fishing. Went on a little scouting trip today with Wayne Eng, another guide up here in Dunsmuir. We were looking at water on the Upper Sac. While this was not primarily a fishing trip I could not resist throwing a size 8 royal stimmy around.
Rose about 20 fish but did not land any. On purpose. I would drop the rod tip on the take, so that I did not hook the fish.
Here while back I was putting a report on the NorCal board and I referred to a scouting trip I had taken, A fellow asked me what the difference was between a scouting trip and a fishing trip. Purposely not hooking the fish is one of the differences, but mainly a scouting trip is more about looking at water, checking access ( it is fairly embarrassing for a guide to not be able to find the out trail when fishing a reach of his home water 
, and seeing what bugs are around, Of course you gotta throw a few casts to be sure the bugs you think will work, do work. And occasionally a scouting trip will degenerate into a fishing trip, especially when fish are eating big dry flys.
There was a mayfly hatch about 2:00 PM. I did not get a good look at the bug because I could not get my hands on one, but I have been seeing Callibaetis, and what I am calling a Slate Wing Olive on the river the last few days. Whatever it is, a Parachute Adams works just fine. Size 14 or 16.
The golden Stoneflys are out well now. The ones I am seeing now in town are the smaller of the two (?) goldens that occur on the Upper Sac. About a size 8 and the usual burnt orange body color. Recalling those yellow colored stones I was seeing early this summer, I am certain that the one in town now is a different species.
This cold weather may slow them down some. I have seen years when a cold storm like this will completely wipe out the goldens for anywhere from a few days to a week, but usually more hatch out and they return. Anyways for the last few days the fish here in town have been on the big flys very well and that should continue for several more weeks.
Quite good. I hit a short stretch of water in the middle of town tonight. I fished a size 8 yellow simulator, and rose in the neighborhood of a dozen fish to it in about 90 minutes of fishing. The actual landing of fish was significantly less (I think I got about 4 fish to hand) because many of the fish that rose to the fly were rather small (4″-7″). The little fish will come up a smack a large dry but more often than not they can not get in their mouth with one bite. I did raise a good half dozen larger fish, but with skillful line handling and superb setting techniques I managed to prevent any from successfully taking the fly.
The hatch is still going. On Tuesday last Tom and I tried a stretch of the river just outside of town.
Not many green drakes were visible in the air but that did not stop the fish from taking the dry.
Tom was happily catching fish on a green drake pattern, so I switched up a bit to
see what the fish would take. I tired a large (size8) yellow simulator pattern, but it did not generate much interest. I then switched to a size 12 yellow parachute stonefly pattern.
It was well received by the fish.
Lately I have noticed that late in the evening the fish sem to be switching to a caddis pattern, so I stitched over to a size 12 Elk Hair Caddis. It worked just fine, but Tom continued to catch fish on the green drake pattern which suggests the fish were not being particularly selective that night..
.
Just the other day I was fishing with Dan and his buddy Mark. They had been out the evening before and done quite well on large yellow stone fly patterns. We returned to the same water the next evening, but we arrived a bit earlier in the day.
Mark heading upstream to the water he did very well in the night before, while Dan and I hit a nice pool just down around the corner.
Dan started fishing the water with the large stone he was using the might before and covered the water well, but did not raise a fish.
When Dan gracefully yielded the water to me, I covered it with a Green Drake pattern since I knew that the drakes were coming off starting about 3:00 pm while the stone are out later in the day.
It worked, and I rose several fish in the next few casts.
The point is that just because a fly worked well one night does not mean that it will perform equally well the next day. Two main factors come into play to effect this.
One: On the Upper Sac the last few hours of light are the magic time, often any well presented fly will work, the fish are in a feeding mode and will take most anything.
Two: At different times of the day different bugs are available to the fish and they will often key on the most numerous bugs at a specific time.
I have been talking about yellow stonefly patterns.
It is much more common to fish this river with a golden stone fly pattern in some flavor of orange. But this year I have noticed that the stones that are coming off right now have a very yellow body. I think that they are still a golden stone, but why the usual amount of yellow in them I do not know. We will see if the color changes as we get into the meat of the hatch which should happen in the next two weeks. .
Well, I guess I had better not make any promises about when updates will happen to this blog. Last entry said I would report on the following Saturday, and here it is five weeks later,
time flies when you are having fun.
I have been all over the place in the last five weeks, looking at and fishing a bunch of the local waters. Most recently I spent a few days on McCloud Reservoir. Many anglers do not try still water fishing, but it can be very productive fishing buggers on sinking lines and nymphs on floating lines in a lake. Main thing you need is a knowledge of the lake and where the schools of fish like to hang out. Once you know the best areas, it is just a matter of fishing each until you locate the schools. I have about a half dozen spot on McCloud Reservoir that I commonly fish and I can always find fish in at least a few of them. On the really good days there will be fish in all of them.
So given that the fishing is productive the other nice aspect of lake fishing is working out of the boat. This provides fishing opportunities to anglers who are not interested in the rigors of a walk and wade trip.
The latest news is the fishing on the Upper Sac. Went out last night with Tom Chandler (of the Trout Underground fame) and stumbles across a nice green drake hatch. Rumors of a green drakes on the river have been going around for a week or so, and I have been doubting the idea. Too much believing the hatch charts. I was convinced that it was too early for a Green Drake hatch. Showed me. Now I gotta eat a little humble pie.
It is interesting that the Drakes I was seeing last night were a little smaller that the “normal “ Green Drake hatch on the Upper Sac. The June Green Drakes are a good size 10 to 8, whereas the ones last night were more like a size 12ish. I did see one larger drake flying thru the air that looked like a size 8 but the rest were more like a 12. Tom took some nice macro shots of one that I caught and has posted it on the Trout Underground. It is hard to tell size from a photo but I guess it at a fat size 12. I suspect that this is a hatch of Drunella Doddsi rather than the Drunella Grandis. I have done a little bit of internet research but have not found a easy way to tell them apart except by size.
This page talks about the Doddsi genus as being 25% smaller than the Grandis:
The Mckenzie Page
So that’s my story and I am sticking to it (for now).
Any entomologists wanna weight here?
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Flows are low , hatches are slow
I have been checking out the Upper Sac last few days.
Flows are great, fishing is fair. Hitting some nice size fish but intermittently.
I do not think I have a really good feel for what is happening on the river yet.
With 36 miles of river it takes a while to check it all out. Been doing end-of-winter clean-up and prepare for summer stuff the last few days so I have just been going out for a few hours in the late afternoon. I have been seeing a suprizing variety of mayflies over the last few days, but no significant numbers of any one bug. It is still a bit too cold for prolific hatches. Water temp in the middle river area was about 50 degrees at 3:00 PM. A few more degrees will really get some bugs moving. I have been finding the occasional pod of fish rising here and there so I have been getting a little dry fly fishing in.
Weather took a turn today. Was out today from 3:30 to about 7:30. Cold and windy. Brr. Hailed for a little while and that wind has a real nip to it. I did not see many mayflies on the water so I mostly nymphed. Got grabs from about seven fish, but only landed two.
Gotta sharpen those dang hooks sooner. 
For the entomologist among you here is a list of the bugs I have been seeing.
I am guessing on the Latin names, based on the Mayfly chart published in
Shasta’s Headwaters by Craig Graham Ballenger, A must read for anglers interested in the Upper Sacramento and McCloud rivers. .
Anybody out there who has been on the river and has other ideas of what the latin names are for these guys I would love to hear from you:
Pink Alberts size 16 (Epeorus albertae)
March Browns size 14 (Rhithrogena morrisoni)
Baetis size 18 (Baetis Tricaudatus)
Calibetis (?) A mottled winged mayfly about a size 16 but a little more tan rather than the usual clibaatis grey. Also calibaetis mostly come off later in the summer so I have real doubts about what bug this one is.
Mahogany Duns size 14, Maybe a 12 (Epeorus nitidus)
Little Western Green Drake size 14ish (Drunella flavilinea)
Been seeing the occasional salmon fly and Golden Stone. Just one here and there. Not happening yet on the Sac, but within the next three weeks we should start seeing better numbers of Salmon flies. They tend to come off in mid may , while the Golden Stones don’t usually really get going until June.
Hit the Pit river yesterday afternoon and found some nice dry fly action.
Found fish rising to a Pink Albert hatch from 3:00 till we stopped at about 7:00.
More Pit fishing over the next few days. It is a little warmer over there and tends to have better early season hatches than the Sac, so with this cold spell that is forecast for the next few days, I think it will be the place to be. Keep in mind that this is the first year we have been able to fish the Pit this early. Until this last March the Pit was on the general trout stream regulations and did not open until the last Saturday in April. Last December DFG
(CA Department of Fish and Game) opened up something like 13 new rivers to year-around fishing. Most of them are over in the Sierras, but here in the North State we got one also.
So this year the Pit opened March 1st, and will now be open year-round. From my standpoint this is a treat. It’s like having a whole new river to fish. I expect some great early season dry fly fishing on the river.
No new photo’s right now. Seem to have misplaced my camera. But it will have to resurface soon. (I hope).
Expect a new entry next Saturday,
