The news...
It has been a while sense I have posted something so here is what I have been up to and what the fishing forecast looks like.
As many know I coach Varsity baseball at Hamilton High School so I have been pretty busy through out the week coaching, taking long bus rides, yelling at kids (in a completely constructive way – though some are 18 years old so they are not really kids), kicking dirt at umpires (I have yet to get tossed this year – I average about 1-2 a season and have gotten pretty close a few times – I blame the umps, they couldn’t pull the trigger), throwing a golf tournament to raise money for our program, and trying to win a league title and get a number one seed in the playoffs with 2 weeks of games left….Busy would be a nice change of pace….baseball season borders on chaos
Fishing kinda takes a back seat during baseball, but I do spend most weekends guiding or fishing on my own. I have been guiding a few days on the Lower Sac for trout and fishing the Lower Sac outside of chico on my own. Lower Sac for trout up around Redding and Anderson has been fishing fair to good. PMD’s and Caddis hatches have been pretty decent on most days and fish have been pretty active around midday through the afternoon. The Lower Sac down through chico has been slowly coming to life. The backwaters are warming and clearing with small and largemouth getting active as well as carp starting to move into the shallows. I have hooked a few stripers up through chico and more and more will show up and get active over the next few weeks. Weather forecast starting this weekend is low to mid 80’s so fishing will jump into gear on this part of the river over the next few weeks. I haven’t heard of any shad being caught yet but I can’t imagine it is to far off with the warm weather next week.
The Lower Feather is still kicking out good numbers of spring steelhead and should remain consistent for another few weeks. I haven’t had a chance to get out there but most all my buddies have and are catching fish on a regular basis. The Lower Yuba is still a torrent of water bouncing between 7000-10,000cfs and I can’t imagine the warm weather coming doing anything to lower the flows.
While the trout opener is this weekend there is not much around chico that is fishable. The North Fork Feather and its tribs are raging and while I have my raft ready to go when the river becomes fishable I am not holding out hope for anything until the mid to end of June. Should be a great year for fishing the North Fork though and I can’t wait to take my raft down a few of the stretches once it becomes fishable.
Fall River and Hat creek I am sure will fish well on the opener, but will be packed with people, as those may be the only legitimate games in Nor Cal. I will most likely be on the Lower Sac for trout or stripers this weekend so no mountain stuff for me. It is starting to look like July will be the month for trout this year. Most streams are going to take a while to come down and become fishable and will not likely stabilize until the end of June or first part of July.
That is the scoop. More reports and photos to come in the following weeks….