Butte Creek...
The one place I get to fish the most in the winter is a little local tributary to the sac that gets a decent steelhead run and has a fair native trout population in various stretches. It is roughly 5-10mins outside of chico and can be waded or floated in a raft depending on the flows. It is a true steelhead river where flows rise and drop with rain and can do so pretty quickly so timing like most things in life is everything.
Yesterday I had the day off due to a cancelation and I have been wanting to try the lower float on the river which requires a bit of a sketchy take out, so I called a good friend of mine and we headed to the creek with raft in tow about noon. River was gin clear and had been dropping steadily for about a week. Our goals was to float the lower stretch to the diversion dam and hopefully run into some fresh fish that moved up over the dam with the last rain. Fishing started slow but by about half way through the float we started to run into some fish and it seemed for about 5-7 runs we hit a fish every run. By the end we had to row through some of the best runs as I had promised my wife a nice steak dinner for new years eve and light was getting at a premium. We ended up landing 5 fish and all hovered around the 16-20" range and one was a nice female full of eggs. Ended up BBQing with my head lamp but it was a great way to spend the afternoon and the take out was easier then I had thought...though it does require two people. Here are some pics...
Yesterday I had the day off due to a cancelation and I have been wanting to try the lower float on the river which requires a bit of a sketchy take out, so I called a good friend of mine and we headed to the creek with raft in tow about noon. River was gin clear and had been dropping steadily for about a week. Our goals was to float the lower stretch to the diversion dam and hopefully run into some fresh fish that moved up over the dam with the last rain. Fishing started slow but by about half way through the float we started to run into some fish and it seemed for about 5-7 runs we hit a fish every run. By the end we had to row through some of the best runs as I had promised my wife a nice steak dinner for new years eve and light was getting at a premium. We ended up landing 5 fish and all hovered around the 16-20" range and one was a nice female full of eggs. Ended up BBQing with my head lamp but it was a great way to spend the afternoon and the take out was easier then I had thought...though it does require two people. Here are some pics...
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| Pretty special Place |
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| Nice Fat Male |
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| rowing can be a little dicey with all the obstacles but all part of the fun |
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| Nice Female |
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| Continue on my friend |