Delta Blues

My wife's uncle and his family came to town from Minneapolis last week for a little family visit, so it was only right for us to get in some grade A California fishing while he was here. He's a big walleye and muskey guy from the Midwest, and when we were out there this last summer he put me on a huge walleye, so it seemed only right to take him out to the Delta for a little striper action... but that was just it... very LITTLE striper action...

I'll admit, I have no clue how to fish the Delta, let alone how to navigate it. I know how to fish for stripers, but it's a whole different ball game down there. I've been told that the formula for success in the delta goes something like this: The water temp needs to be about right, the bait fish need to be plentiful, the water clarity needs to be reasonable, the tides need to be right, and you just need to know where the fish hold... ya.... we didn't have any of that stuff working for us. The water looked like chocolate milk, the water temps were in the upper 40's, and we didn't mark a single fish on the finder all day.

We launched at Wimpy's around 7 am and motored down to Beaver Slough where we pricked one schoolie right away, but that was it for the entire day. That "right-off-the-bat" fish is always a bad sign... You catch a fish right away thinking that, "Today is gonna' be a good day!...." wrong....

At least we didn't get skunked. I would've rather had my guest catch that fish, but that's just how it happens sometimes. We fished several other sloughs looking for warmer water trying to find the bait fish... We found some warmer water, but not a single bait ball all day... SSSLLLLLOOOOOOWWW.... but that's what everyone was telling me before we even launched, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised...

Winter fish porn...

Just a little more winter fish porn madness...

Krakowwww!

The AR is always worth a shot.

I've heard from several people that there are stripers in the lower AR all year, just hangin' out chowin' on salmon and steelhead smolts all winter and spring. Although the people I've talked to haven't really fished for them in the dead of winter, they did say that it would be interesting to see if you could catch anything in January, and if you did hook into one, that it would probably be a monster. What the hell..... I'm always up for a challenge.

Mikey was coming down to give a talk to the TU chapter and he had mentioned that he wanted to try chucking some flies for stripers, so I borrowed Dan B.'s drift boat and we had at it.

We put in at Sunrise and fished all the way to Goethe chucking clousers and long striper patterns with maybe a bump or two, but nothing to show for. I was having my doubts when all of a sudden Mikey hooks-up with a fish just above the footbridge at Goethe. The fish came unbuttoned before we could have a look at it, but we did see some flashy silver, so we just guessed that it was striper. Two casts later, Mikey has a solid hook-up and puts a huge bend in his 10 wt. After a good fight and a couple of short runs, the fish came up to the top and... sure as shit... a hatchery steelhead...

Not the striper we were looking for, but still a good fight and a good night. Those stripers are in there, and now I can't wait until summer to really turn the heat on those silent killers, the Boogey Man, as Mikey calls 'em.

Round 3...

The barneys from the bay can have the Yuba. I'm tired of driving up there and finding like 30 other dudes corked-out on every stretch of fishable water, acting like they're giving me a lesson on how to catch a Yuba trout; slashing at the rising fish wondering why they aren't taking their black and tan parachute adams... They can have it... I'll wait until summer when the fly fisherman hatch turns off and the real fishing turns on...

In the mean time... I'll try to find some other way to get my fix....

Hows about a 20 inch Truckee torpedo?...

Now that's how you ring in the new year!

How can a trout get so fat eating a bug so small?

Why does the Truckee hate me?

We were deserving of a redo on the Truckee after the last showing. Spending 6 hours stuck in traffic last time for an hour and a half of fishing definitely sucked, but we did catch fish in that hour and a half, and that was enough to send us back. So, this last Sunday we went back for seconds. Again, we knew there was a storm coming in that night, but it didn't slow us down. Like the mouse to the electric cheese: we wanted it regardless of the shit we might end up going through... again, and again, and again, and again...

At least the storm held-out until we were off the water, but this time it wasn't the weather that defecated on a perfectly good day of fishing. Oh no... the weather?... no problem... roads?... totally clear... broken rod?... not that day... skunked?... nope... how about an overlooked barb on a size 18 hare's ear?... life sucks...

No explanation necessary...

Regardless of the well over-exaggerated unnecessary fine that I'll probably need a payment plan to pay-off, the day wasn't a total loss: the fishing was pretty damn good! There was so much snow covering the rocks and the banks that it was actually easier to get around in the river.

Cold water meant that the fish were holed-up in the deeper slower-moving water, but they were surprisingly willing to take a fly. I would go so far as to say that they were actually moving quite a bit to take the fly. Presentation (as always) was pretty important, but it didn't seem like you needed to put the flies right in front of the fish.

The hot fly for me was a size 18 tan hare's ear (barbless).

Fishing the Truckee this time of year lends itself to sight fishing, but we were only able spot one hole the entire day with fish in it that we could see. Granted, there were about 8 fish in the hole, and we managed to land 6 of them.

Scott with a fatty that we could see eating suspended critters in the water column.

Most of the fishing was to good-looking water, and generally that would produce fish. Scott's hot fly was a midge larva/pupa that you can see in the corner of this fish's mouth.

Because of the lower flows, the fish were congregated in deeper water, which meant that where one fish was there were likely others. Most of the time we'd fish to the same hole even after two or three fish had already been pulled to hand from it, and still catch fish.

The fish were healthy and had plenty of energy even in the cold Truckee water. Several times a hooked fish would actually run up and down and in and out of the pool it was hooked in. Not the same lethargic fish from the last trip.

I don't know what the water temps were, but the water felt cold enough when you put your hand in it. The air temps were probably in the 40's with a fairly stiff wind. Skies were partly cloudy, and in the sun it felt like 70 degrees.

The Truckee proved, once again, to be a great winter fishery... Just remember to pinch your barbs...

Louise waving goodbye to the Truckee after a citation and a hook in the finger.

Storm?... What storm?...

We should've heeded the signs before we even got into the car... but... as any other 'junkie' fisherman knows, once you get into that glassy-eyed, inviolable, mode of fishing... ain't nothin' gonna' stop you; not even mother nature.

It's easy to explain WHY we picked the Truckee, after a banner winter season last year from the town of Truckee to the state line, but it's a little harder to explain why we picked this last Saturday to test the waters this season. Every weather report was saying that the storm wasn't even going to hit the VALLEY until 7 pm... we could totally get up there before the clouds even move-in, slap the water for a few hours, pull a couple nice fish in, and then cut-out before a single flake even falls...

...what the hell were we thinking?

The first sign was a pretty obvious one: Louise calls about 7:50 and says that the Folsom Auburn road is closed and she'll be late for our 8:00 am meeting... no problem... The next sign: I meet Scott in Auburn. We look up at the clouds, and they're barreling-in eastward at probably 40 knots... I kept saying that it was probably just a marine layer that was moving-in before the low pressure front... wrong... The next sign: Louise calls again and says that the entire north-south thoroughfare is closed from El Dorado Hills to Watt Ave. and that she won't even be able to get through until 8:30... getting worse... Probably the most obvious sign: after getting on the road, we hit Yuba Gap and the outside temps are in the mid teens... what the hell were we thinking?

Oh well... we made it... The water through town and above Boca was ffffffffrozen solid, but the water below Boca looked delicious. Temp was about 14 degrees at Boca.


All smiles while we were rigging up, but (again) we Should've Seen the Signs Sooner...the four esses of bad fortune....

The first snowflakes started falling just as we were looping our indicators on.

Notice the shadows on the glove... oh ya, the sun was still poking through at this point.

The trip wasn't a total bust. Between de-icing the guides on my rod and trying to thaw my fingers, I managed to hook and land two beautiful fish on a size 18 hare's ear about 200 yards below the LT and BT confluence.


About 15 minutes later, the clouds opened-up and it just started puking snow.

Scott and Louise working the water hard, regardless of the conditions.

Louise hooked-up with a nice fish just above the Hirschdale on-ramp, but it came unbuttoned before she could get it to hand... No worries. With the water at about 38 degrees, and the wind chill around -10, it's better that you didn't have to put your hands in the water like I did. My fingers still hurt.

Even though Scott got the big skunk, the shittiest day award had to go to Louise after snapping her rod in half just above the middle ferrule. We were only on the water for about an hour and a half, but I guess that's what happens when the power of bad luck is on your side. Good thing that was basically the end of the day anyway. After breaking two of the same rod (if I knew the make and model I'd potty-mouth the manufacturer right about now), hopefully this time the rod maker will send her a rod that doesn't break.

The broken rod was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back, so we rolled-out hoping to avoid getting stuck in Truckee... nope...

Traffic was dead-stopped just west of the bug station. The freeway was shut down so crews could mop-up a nasty crash involving a sleepy truck driver and a cal-trans worker (so we were told). We sat, stopped, bumper-to-bumper with about 1,000 other motorists and watched as the roads went from clear, with some dusty snow blowing across, to socked-in with about 8 inches of snow.

After a couple hours we were really getting rummy, having gone through all of the 500 pictures on Scott's camera. Scott - it's time to put some of the pics onto a CD or something. Good thing there was a 6 foot traveling buddha to laugh at.


We fianlly pulled-off the freeway to regroup and get some carnitas in the stomach, but just as soon as we ordered the food, a guy told us that the road had just re-opened... "Check please!"

After two and a half hours of slow-going and dodging Honda Civics with chains on the wrong tires, we finally made it back.

Nice and toasty inside the car, but still a little frosty outside. Brutal wiper conditions.

That was probably the last time we fish before a storm, but it sure made for some great stories.

The Atlantic Bomber

It's like having your cake and eating it too: monster salmon on a dry fly? I guess anything's possible in Canada, eh.



Wait for it.... wait for it... aaannnnd... yup, that was a 40 lb salmon eating that dry fly.

Attack of the Klamathon

Spent three days on the Klamath with Dan B. this last weekend swinging flies for steelhead. After hearing some stellar reports from a few people here and there, we decided to grab the spey rods and the drift boat and see for ourselves.

This is the look you get from Dan when you take too long to rig-up.

We stuck to the Iron Gate to Klamathon bridge float for all three days. Surprisingly, the most crowded day was the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Saturday wasn't bad in terms of other boaters, and on Sunday it was basically us and Craig Nielson with a client.

The fishing was tough all three days. Dan did all the work catching several half-pounders the first day as well as this wild fish near the end of the day on a chartreuse and black egg-sucking leech.


I didn't touch a fish the entire first day. But, I was satisfied with one solid grab near the take out, and a day of good casts... no... that's a lie... I was pretty butt-hurt about not catching a fish the entire day. It was cool; we had two more days of fishing and things couldn't get any worse....

Day two was nearly a shut-out for me again, but around midday, just as I finished whining about, "All I want to do is touch a fish," I finally hook-up... with a 4 inch fish...

Dan says, "hurry up and touch it...." I wanted to throw it at him.

Day two was slower than day one for Dan. We took the advice of Craig Nielson and started swinging some smaller flies, but I don't think it really made a difference. In fact, Dan said he had fewer grabs on smaller flies than he did the day before using huge leeches. So we switched back to larger flies on day three.


Day three started, again, pretty slow with grabs here and there and an occasional half-pounder... for Dan... not me...

It wasn't until about noon on day three that I finally hooked a fish, and it was still only about 12 inches.

Dan, doin' the D-loop hustle.

We finished the last day with a stop at a long fishy-looking run that lit-up as soon as the sun started to fall behind the trees. Dan and I both had several good grabs and one or two solid hook-ups. Dan landed two or three more half-pounders before landing this beefy wild hen.


Gorgeous fish, except it would have looked much better in my hands. We would've fished the run harder, longer, but we had a 30 minute paddle to the take-out, plus a five hour drive home.

We ran into Craig Nielson again at the take-out who said that his client had several solid fish to the boat as well as a few hot fish that came unbuttoned.... and that's why he does what he does, and we don't... Super nice guy, Craig is. He was generous enough to give Dan and I a couple of his swinging flies for the next trip. Next time, we put Craig in the boat with us and just watch him fish.

Good trip. Lots of fun. I wished the catching was a little better, but that's pretty much how my life goes.

Combat fishing with a full metal jacket...

Long time no post, but sometimes life so rudely interrupts fishing with these things my wife likes to call "responsibilities". Although I finally got some stuff finished (responsibilities) around the house in preparation for winter, I'll admit, the whole time I couldn't help but dream about hookin' monster steelhead... It was hard to concentrate when the weather started changing and the reports started coming in from all over... To make it that much worse, two of my fishing buddies get back from the Copper and Kispiox with pictures of fish so big, I could swear they were fake... Where's MY hero shot of a 15 lb chrome steelhead?...

That was it... I was outa' there, and on my way to the first steelhead stop this season: the Trinity River.

Scott and I packed-up and bolted first thing in the morning on Saturday, and were on the water by 9:00 am, along with lots of other fisherman.

I've heard other people say it, and laughed when they did, but this time it was literally like there had been a fly fisherman hatch. Just like mayflies wait until the water temp and lighting is just right to hatch, so do the fisherman; and just like mayflies all hatch at once in huge swarms... so do the fisherman. This weekend proved to be perfect conditions for the fly fisherman hatch.

Scott and I tried our hardest to avoid the crowds, and surprisingly, did a pretty good job doing so. Although we didn't catch lots of adult steelhead, we did avoid the full metal jacket style combat fishing that the Trinity is now pretty famous for. I'm sure Scott was ultimately happy (I know I was) that we didn't fish a lot of spots with tons of people, but I could tell Scott was a little concerned about the fact that some of the spots we fished had zero people in them, or even near them. I remember him saying a couple of times, "There's gotta' be a reason that there's nobody in this spot," and he was probably right, but I wasn't willing to join the crowds to find out if the fishing was better elsewhere.

We started near the end of Steiner Flat in some amazing-looking pocket water that just screamed, "FISHY!"

We were the only people in sight except for a couple truck and trailers upstream and one other guy that fished and left after about 5 minutes of getting his line wet. Although the water looked like there'd be fish just stacked-up in there, Scott only managed two smolts and what looked like a small native rainbow.

Technically, I got the big goose egg through that 300 yards of water we fished, but Scott's second smolt was really my fish: I was drifting this perfect-looking run using Scott's rod without any takes. On the last drift I handed the rod back to Scott in mid-drift, and sure enough, a fish takes the indicator down right as I handed it to him. Scott didn't even have to set the hook.... Story of my life...

We moved up-river several times, still on Steiner Flat, to some other spots where the water, again, looked like there'd be fish sitting in there in a chow line waiting for some flies.... nope... We fished it down until dark without as much as a grab... I guess that's why they call it fishing, and not catching. It was a pretty disappointing start to the trip, but I guess it could have been worse.

That night we probably could have gotten away with camping out at the DC campground, but it got pretty cold by the time we were off the river, so I was glad we'd rented a room at the local roach motel in Weaverville. Not a fine establishment, but it was perfect for two stinky fisherman just looking for a place to lay their heads down... Bummer for Scott... he got the floor... Don't know how that happened, but I'm not complaining...

When we were checking-in, one of those "I'll never forget that face" moments happened after the woman explained that the room only had one bed.
"You guys know that there's only one bed on the room, right?" She said.
"Oh yeah, we're good..." I said without thinking about the connotation...
And that's when the "I'll never forget that face" moment happened as she looked at us silently with total confusion for about 3 second solid, darting her eyes back-and-forth; looking at me, then looking at Scott, then back at me... Thankfully, the silence and uncomfortable feeling was broken by the whirring of the credit card machine as the slip was being printed. Then she sort-of shrugged her shoulders and went back to business... good times.

So far we had received some mixed reports from other anglers that went from two or three fish to no fish caught on Saturday; however, we talked with a couple of guys in the motel lobby (I guess you could cal it a lobby) that fished below JC and said they boated 9 fish with one at 9 lbs... sure you did... I think I'm gonna call shenanigans. They did say that most of the people they had talked too below JC had been catching fish, while everybody above had our same luck. So, on a crazy chance that these guys were telling the truth, we decided to fish below JC the second day.

The next morning we got a crazy-early start... not really by choice... but one of the great things about that motel was that it was right next to a bakery that opened at 5:00 in the morning; so, first thing the next morning we went over to the bakery and got some doughnuts and hot coffee before we blasted-off.

First stop on day 2 was a run in JC where some guys last year had chastised me for corking there hole before they got there. I stayed there last year because I figured there must be a reason these guys like this run... I didn't catch any fish in that spot last year, but it was so fishy that I just couldn't not go back this year again. Again, the water looked amazing, but the fish just weren't there, or weren't biting. The water may have been a little cold for the fish, but it was warming-up fast and we stayed at that spot for a couple hours. Needless to say, we didn't touch a fish. I had a couple of short takes on the swing, but no repeat offenders. Scott pounded the water all along the entire run with his nymph rig with not one taker! Times were already getting tough and it was only 9:00 in the morning.

It wasn't simply that we weren't catching fish that was starting to bug me, it was that the water looked SOOO good, and we didn't even so much as see a fish. It was brutal.

We moved on to another run called the oil slick where we pretty much fished the same 200 yards of water for the remainder of the day. Right when we got there it was, again, a little strange that there was nobody else already at this spot. The water looked perfect and everybody we had talked to so far said that there has never been so many people on the river at one time before. We didn't let it slow us down though. We started at the top of the pool where river poured into a huge toilet bowl of current, and then tailed out into some picture-perfect steelhead holding water. Scott was dead drifting his nymph rig while I started swinging around the middle of the run.

It wasn't long when Scott says, "I think I've got a fish," and a huge fish comes flying out of the water about 30 ft upstream. I reeled-in, dropped my rod off in the bushes, and started splashing up the river to help Scott land this fish. Scott wrestled the fish for a couple of minutes when he noticed that the fish suddenly wasn't fighting right, and as the fish swung down near my knees I could see that it had spit the barbless hook from the lead fly that it ate, but had been tagged by the dropper just under it's pectoral fin. Total bummer because the 5-6 lb fish went from a good fight, to good night real quick. There was no way Scott could land the fish now, and every time it swam out into the current, it would just start peeling line as it drifted down towards a riffle that would definitely end the chase. I tried several times to tail the fish before it was too late, but that fish had plenty of fight left in it and no room for us to go.

I know Scott wasn't excited to see the fish pop off, but I could tell that he wouldn't have been satisfied with a foul-hooked fish if he had landed it. It was a good sign though, and in my opinion, a reason to celebrate... at least we then knew first-hand that there were fish in that perfect water after all!

We stayed on the same stretch moving up and down river off and on hoping to find some fish moving while the overcast skies still hung overhead.

After about an hour our guessing as to why nobody else had been at that spot stopped when four other people came down and parked at the tail end of the run. We had already moved to the pool below the slick and were debating moving back up to cork-out that great water where Scott hooked that fish, but as soon as we took our first steps back up river, a couple of guys came walkin' out of the bushes and posted-up right where we wanted to go...

Good thing we stayed where we did. I turned around and started swinging a silver hilton at the top of this fast water pool that we were sitting on while Scott drifted his nymph rig down below. Like somebody had suddenly flipped the switch on, Scott started tagging smolts left and right. He had 4 fish in 6 casts... mind you, at this point, I still haven't touched a fish... I'll admit it, I was starting to get a little jealous... but not for long...

After swinging short from the head of the pool 2 or 3 times, a moster fish came up and slammed that silver hilton like a friggin maco shark. The shock loop against the cork on my rod came flying out of my fingers and peeled about a foot of line off the reel. I pulled the rod tip up and the fish surged down hard, and just as it did, the knot connecting the fly to the leader cashed its chips in and the fish swam off with one of the only two silver hiltons I had left... I was a little bummed that I missed that fish, because it was big, but I was glad to have the elevated heart rate for a few minutes.

Nothing gets the blood pumping like a big steelhead taking a fly on the swing.

I tied my last silver hilton on and finished swinging the rest of the run, and just as I was getting to the last cast... WHAM!... but this time this fish wasn't gettin' off.

I fought the fish for a few minutes and had a couple of close calls when the fish swam through my legs, by I managed to get this beautiful wild fish to hand.

That fish alone was worth the trip.

We fished for another hour or so, taking over our prime water again, but didn't touch another fish. The sun was fading and we had a long drive home, so we decided to call it early. Then, after not spotting a single fish in the water nearly the entire trip, I spotted a big steelhead holding against the bank right as we were driving out. All the rods had been broken-down and the waders had been taken-off. There was no chance we were going get at that fish. We did get out of the truck and spotted one maybe two other salmon swimming around in the run. Scott thought what we had seen might have been a salmon; but, I didn't want to tell him that I was positive it wasn't.

Good trip and good company. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Next stop? Probably the American this Friday with a wild chance that there might be some adult steelhead in the river.