David Neal Reports on 8.11.2016
The Lower Sacramento River in downtown Redding continues to produce incredible fishing. You shouldn’t wait till fall season and the highly popular egg drop… you should consider fishing right now! August and September will offer up some great days of fishing on the Lower Sac for these badass, super-charged, wild rainbow trout.
A few mornings have been a little tight, but by afternoon when the caddis start getting more active - the fish turn on! It’s pretty counter-intuitive to be fishing the middle part of the day (right?) as most of our other rivers in CA it’s all about fishing super early and super late in the day right now… but this tailwater fishery is a whole different beast. With stable and consistent flows of 53-55 degree water out of the dam this water is super-cold and the river system pretty much writes it’s own rules. Best fishing for me has been around 10am-5pm and then again around sunset, wherein you may get some surface and dry fly action. For wade anglers the best time of day is probably near sunset… find a shallow riffle and swing caddis pupa, soft hackles, etc, or skate/dead drift caddis dries
Flows have bumped up slightly to 11,000cfs (yes, that is a lot of cold water flowing and it’s GREAT for drift boats). 11k is a great summer flow. I hear that flows “probably” will not go any higher and will slowly drop once we fall season approaches.
Two primary reasons why I believe the Lower Sac has fished
so well and consistently this summer are: The flows have remained pretty stable
this summer – 6k then 8k, then around 10k for long periods of time. And, of
course the 4- month closure to protect the winter-run salmon. The latter gave
the trout a huge break and the “re-opener” on August 1st created
sort of a shot in the arm event right in the middle of the “dog days” of summer
when many of our summer fisheries hit the doldrums.
I have some openings in August and September that I would love to book…August 15, 16, 18, 19, 30. September 6, 7, 13-16, 19, 21, 26, 27, 30
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Matt “Gilligan” Koles Reports on 8.11.2016Pretty much the same as last post up here fishing wise on the Truckee River. Nice cool mornings and warm afternoons. August on the Truckee River, crayfish ...
Attention Pit River anglers:PG&E will be doing a scheduled white water release for recreational boaters on August 13 and 14 and again on September 10 and 11. These flows will only be on Pit 5 a...
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