I've been out on the river 6 of the last 10 evenings and it's been dry fly heaven. The fish have been devouring Pink Lady #16's and then caddis patterns late in the dusk, and I can honestly say it has been the best sustained stretch of dry fly fishing I've ever had. Not even close really. This fish pictured is from earlier in the spring, during the spawn before daylight savings time when I was getting out more midday and swinging nymphs. I've caught bigger fish recently, but none so pretty. The males pimp up real solid when it's time to get down. I'm out away from the banks fishing now and it's harder to take good pictures of netted fish. Especially when you're by yourself.Although I'm curious, I haven't been inclined lately to get out early and swing any nymphs or soft hackles to see what's working during the day. I'm already feeling guilty about hooking so many fish in the same spot in so few days fishing just the evening hatches. I'm going to go exploring tomorrow. Seems like it's the boily slicks where they're spread out to feed at the moment, and that probably won't change through the summer and early fall until the Salmon come in October/November and the trout push up under the riffles to eat eggs - another great time to fish. Damn. It's a embarrassment of slimy riches up here.
I've recently returned to Sutter County to care for my uncle, Mr. Jack Swift. Jack is a prince of a guy and was a big influence for me coming up. Hung with The Diggers in the Haight pre-summer of love, and he and his friends were my first inkling that there was another, better, more beautiful and funny way to live than the one I was getting shoved into by my folks. By the time I was 15, he had turned me onto Freddy King, Albert King, Taj Mahal, Otis Redding, John Coltrane, Albert Collins, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and much much more essential roots groove music while we got BAKED at his spot in Sutter, ca. 1970.
My dad (who had some Count Basie and Ray Charles, Ella, Louis, Nancy Wilson and Stan Getz records laced in with the Streisand and Walter Wonderly, Andy Wiulliams and Tijuana Brass) thinks the weed is what made me a goofy late teen. I think it was the 15-20 concussions I gave myself playing football. We'll never agree, but the science is on my side. Anyway, Jack made me promise that if I came up here to look after him, I'd go fishing every chance I got. Even loaned me his 9' Powell Rod. Like I said, a prince.
It's ridiculous to me that there is such a top flight fishery so close - 19 miles - to where I grew up and I'm only getting to know it now, forty years later. As teenagers, we figured it was too close to town to be any good and we'd drive by it on our way to the high country small streams. I wouldn't trade my creek decades for anything, especially the last couple with the evil spawn girl (aka the best fishing buddy EVER!), and I've been big river scared a couple times in there, but right now I like it even better than the Pit and the McCloud and the Upper Sac when it's bangin', and those have been my favorite NorCal rivers forever. Never been a big fan of boat fishing so, although it's unquestionably top western water, the Lower Sac never appealed to me that much.
My routine is, I see if Lance (Uncle Jack's Aussie Shepard) wants to get in the car around 6 or 6:30, stop by Johnson's bait and tackle over on Garden Highway for leader or flies, if needed, and I'm usually hiking in by 6:30 or 7. It's a bit of a walk to the spot, but I'm usually in the water by 7 or 7:30 and often have a fish on right away, even before I've seen any rises. By 8:45, I've been through the PED and caddis hatches and there are trout jumping all around me as I fish my way back across to the rockbar where I hit the river.
I make long casts 45 degrees upstream and do a couple of flip mends to fix the drift until the fly starts throwing a wake and I have as much line out as I want. Then I skate the fly back toward me by raising the rod and pulling in line. I let it dead drift downstream, throwing stack mends as I watch it bounce, fly first, away from me downstream, then I raise the rod, skate it back and drift it down 3 or 4 times through different feeding lanes and then I make another long cast 45 degrees upstream, starting the whole process over.
Most of the rises happen straight across or downstream, with many coming during the successive skates and dead drifts more or less straight downstream from wherever I'm standing. It's a pretty simple technique once you get used to handling a as much line as you need.
It's a big river. Often I'm surprised at how big a fish is when I get it to the net. They don't look that big when they're jumping at the end of a long line hookup in that big water. If they look like they have any size at all when they're making their runs and jumps, you know they're in the 18 to 22 inch range. They all fight like crazy though. I've had 13, 14 inch fish get the really curly line off the bottom of the reel and onto the water two or three times in a couple of minutes. Chrome Dynamite is what they are, no joke, and they're all indigenous, wild fish.
I haven't caught a hatchery fish yet, although I've heard there are some in there. There's a zero limit on the natives and the wild andronomous (seagoing) fish, so they all go right back in the river, which probably has a lot to do with why it's so good. The smaller ones look so tasty though, it's hard not to think about eating 'em. There are got plenty of places up higher in the mountains to find pan-sized non-native species (German Browns) for the frying pan. Hit one last weekend. It was still high. Probably will be for another month or so. I guess that last snowstorm did more good than I heard. We're still deep in a drought though. We just had our driest winter since 1976-77!
If the evenings stay this good down here through the summer, I'm going to have to scout out a lot of new spots to keep 'em all fresh. I figure I've hooked 40 or 50 fish in the last 10 days (6 trips) fishing for, on the average, about an hour and a half per evening. Easily two thirds of those fish have been 14" and above. Like I said, best dry fly action ever.
Truth be told, though, that's probably too many. 3 nice fish broke me off tonight. On the first one I kept casting with a knot in my leader. I feel horrible about that one in particular. The other 2 made long runs and broke off while I was giving them line. There's a popular myth that hooks rust and fall out in a couple days. Not true. Studies have shown that even barbless hooks left in stripers took a from a week to several months to come out on their own. Sobering. I'm switching to 4x tomorrow.
