Winter Steelhead & Klamath Update
Riley Rennick of Wild Waters Fly Fishing Reports on December 13th, 2024
Winter Steelhead Tips and Klamath Update
Wild Water’s founder and guide John Rickard always says, you want to be the one writing the fishing report, not reading it. This advice rings the truest in the wintertime, when conditions change quickly. If you spend too much time waiting for a good report, you’ll find yourself out on the river on a lot of “should have been here yesterday”, kind of days. Keep an eye on weather trends and flow predictions – but most of all just get out there and have a look. A big storm is shaping up for this weekend, once the rivers start to drop its game on for the winter steelhead season.
Klamath Update
On the last report, I said I was hopeful that I would catch a 2024 Klamath fish, unfortunately that is looking unlikely at the moment. After seeing the clarity improve significantly, we decided to go try to catch one up by the former Iron Gate dam site. Chuck Volckhausen reports: We fished at the site formerly known as Iron Gate, yesterday. We did not get a single bite. Water color looked much better, which prompted our mission. The side of the river is still very muddy, difficult to get in and out of the boat almost everywhere, up to your knees in mud and hard to take 3 steps. From my perspective, the first storm did help the river in overall turbidity, but it didn’t grab much sediment from the side or the river or eddies. I don’t think the fishing will improve and it was obvious that part of the river still needs to do some serious healing. Reports say conditions look great down river. 6’ of vis in Orleans. That’s a good sign for our early season down river fishing next year.
Riley Renick
Wild Waters Fly Fishing
877-934-7466
Leave a comment