* Mid January - Coastal River - Tim Loomis
On a cold and dank morning somewhere on the central coast two wacky flyfishermen (Barry and Tim) went looking for steelhead on an area coastal river. The steelhead were not biting but a couple of stripers happened to get themselves caught.
Who would of thought that a striper bite would occur during a steelhead excursion. Stripers were schoolie size. We had fun. End of story.
* January 15th - Floating the Stanislaus - Roy Gunter
On Sunday January 15th, Harry Petrakis, new member Peter Fabian and I floated three miles down the Stanislaus River from Knights Ferry to Horseshoe Recreation Area. After, dinner, "revelry" and a nights' stay at Goodwin, we entered the water at about 8 am. That morning it was cold enough for ice on our windshields. The flows were perfect at 500 - 600 CFS as we approached Russian Rapids one eighth mile down river. A sign offered a portage around; but Peter, a first time river float tuber, "offered" to let me go first. I had been through this rapid several times before at lower flows. This time, it was one hell of a nice ride as the waves washed over the top of my Fatcat and around my waist. Then, Peter swept through amazed to be alive and how easy it was, although he probably got a little wetter in his low rider tube.
Fishing one mile further down river produced only a few rainbows 14 inches or less until the river became wider and the flow moderate 4 to 5 feet over weed beds. I knew immediately the rainbows would be here if anywhere; and worked the water hard, back and forth with my go to river fly, a black size 6 pistol peet - for the uninitiated traditionalists, a seal bugger with a small metal propeller just behind the hook's eye. Soon all three of us were tossing pistol peets cross current and stripping them in fast. Among my catches was a beautiful 20 inch rainbow. At the end of this productive 400 foot run, a 30 inch steelhead showed me his entire back as he rested at the top of a rapids. But he wanted nothing to do with Mr. Peet, so I introduced Harry to him as he showed his back again 20 feet between us. For 30 minutes Harry tossed every fly he could think of at the steelhead, but he had left his size 000 treble hooks at home, so he too finally had to abandon his efforts.
Halfway through the drift, in 10 minutes we spotted a great egret, a bald eagle and an osprey. Later, Harry landed a 19 inch rainbow on a gold size 6 burks bullet head minnow.
Before we left the water at 4 pm, it had warmed to 60 degrees under a mostly sunny blue sky. We had been the only humans on the river that day. It was by far my best float ever on the Stanislaus out of 3 prior.
I'm looking forward to improved flows for floats on the Merced River around Snelling and on the Tuolumne River around La Grange. I love these Central Valley tailwaters which are all within 45 minutes from Goodwin. Fish On.
* December 19th - Lower Owens River - Elaine Cook
"How about going to Bishop for some fishing in the Lower Owens?" pleads John. "Okay, so it's going to be in the teens at night but there are no storms predicted. We're going to be in L.A. for Christmas anyway and it's on the way. Well, not really. But Tioga is open, SHOCK! That will save us about two hours of driving. Yes, we'll be fishing on the shortest daylight days of the year, so we won't wear ourselves out." John's pleading worked, so we went. A really good choice, as it turned out. Going over Tioga was a breeze, no traffic and a surprise; ice skaters on Tanya Lake.
Our first stop was Hot Creek. No people, no hatches, no fish, but LOTS of cold! Then to our actual destination. Don't know when we've been at the Owens when the conditions were so good. The flow was less than 150 cfs, no wind the four days we fished, only ran into two other people fishing, midges everywhere and hatches of small mayflies everyday. We never had to nymph fish and almost all fish were caught with dry flies, a few with a midge dropper. We got to explore stretches of the river we've never seen before looking for rises. We caught nice Browns and a few Rainbows every day. On our most productive day we each landed about 10. All in all, Thank you John, for the persistence!