October 16th, 17th, 18th, Lower Sacramento River near Anderson
Sunday the 16th Tim Loomis and I met up with SCFF member Duwayne Norton and his son-in-law Mike Hall and fished the River, walking and wading. Flows were 8000 cfm and we had no trouble finding good water to wade and fish.
We fished 3 hours with several grabs but no fish landed. Tim fished an indicator and Duwayne, Mike and I fished baitfish and stonefly patterns on a tight line. Duwayne used a 9 wt floating Rio Steelhead Taper line he modified to accept various lengths of leadcore from 5 to 15 feet. I tried the 5 foot section and it laid out nicely and sank quickly in a fairly fast 2 foot run. I thought it fished very well, easily keeping the fly on the bottom. Can you say Trinity River?
Monday and Tuesday Tim and I fished with a guide from the Fly Shop in Redding, our own Brian Bommarito. Brian's intimate knowledge of the sections we fished kept us in fish all day on Monday for 11 hours (the "Full Monty" as he likes to call it). The largest fish was a nice 20 incher that fell for Tim's micro mayfly, We used several of Tim's Rainey flies. A size 14 golden stone fly was especially good as were the rubber leg micro mayflies size 14 and 18 and various egg patterns in pink that Brian purchased at the Fly Shop. We used 4x fluorocarbon leaders provided by Brian. Most fish were 14" - 17".
At lunch time we fished a run from shore with great success. Here, Brian showed us how to fish behind the redds where the trout were laying. By using the right kind (tin) of weight and laying the leader out straight so as not to hang up we were able to fish skinny water 8 inches to 15 inches deep, with no snags, only takes.
Monday night Brian asked if we wanted to do the same thing the next day or take a chance on catching steelhead at the cost of fewer grabs. We opted for steelhead. We wound up not catching one but that was ok. We still got our lines stretched plenty and had two large fish on, one that we saw one that we did not. They were not salmon. To top it off we got to fish through Ball's Ferry and finished up the evening at the Barge hole with the sun setting and salmon to 35 pounds leaping as high as four feet in the air all around us. It was magic. - Harry Petrakis