Lower Sac and Yuba Fly Fishing Report

Hogan Brown reports on 12.10.2015

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Reports right now…Still spending most of my time on the Lower Sacramento River down between Red Bluff and Corning chasing trout and steelhead. With Low water in most of the tributaries most of the steelhead are staying in the main river or waiting at the creek mouths to move up. We have been hooking about a dozen plus nice trout each day with a few shots at nice adult wild and hatchery steelhead most days. Some days are better then others but this seems to be the average. The main goal is to hook one of the bigger wild steelhead that hang down in this area before moving up one of the creeks. we have been mostly nymphing but there are plenty of options to get out and swing flies if that is more an anglers speed.

RAIN COMING…Will most likely blow out the lower floats on the Sac if the tributaries come up enough. I am hoping we get a good push of water down Butte Creek and really get that think cranking to move some fish up and clear it out. Even with the rains we have had the creek has not come up over 200cfs. The Lower Yuba also needs a BIG push of water…500-600cfs is no good on that river. Hopefully the rains kick deer creek up to a few hundred CFS and get a good push down the river. That said I highly doubt no matter how much rain we get will the flows out of Englebright be increased.

Year in Review…I am pretty fortunate to have a pretty diverse guiding program and one that has not been drastically affected by drought…though it has to some degree. This diversity keeps it all fresh and keeps what I do from getting old. This year May -October I spent most of my time guiding for stripers, shad, smallmouth and largemouth bass on the Lower Sacramento River outside of chico. I even logged some days on Clear Lake fishing for the big largemouth that haunt that place. Nov-March I get to spend in the drift boat guiding trout and steelhead on the Lower Sacramento River, Lower Yuba River, and Feather River. We could of used more water in our rivers and some rivers fished better then others but I tend to focus on the positive and I had the best spring/summer/fall striper fishing i have ever had and some of the best top water largemouth fishing ever. Fall and spring steelhead fishing was tough with low water but we had some memorable fish and the fish we did catch held a bit more significance then a number in a list of fish as we had to work hard for them. Overall it has been a great year fishing amazing rivers with amazing people.

some pics of memorable fish with great clients: