Feather River

The Feather River. Quality over quanitity?

Feather River Hatchery Steelie

The number of steelhead that have returned to the hatchery this year is less than half of what it was last year in 2014. Here are the numbers from an article from the Fishsniffer website: 677 adults this year (2015) compared to 1472 adults last year (2014). On a good note though these fewer fish are bigger. Three fish that were captured and returned to the hatchery were over 17+ pounds. Amazing.

There are always steelhead in the Feather River system but these bluebird bright sunny days are tough days to fish. It was pretty slow yesterday despite being on a good run that usually produces at sunrise. After not getting a single take I fished near the hatchery and saw a few other anglers hook up but it was also very slow for me.

Disappointed, I and wanted to beat the 2015 steelhead skunk. The following day I was able to hook two fish and land a nice hen a little under 5 pounds. This steelie is probably my new personal best. She was pretty beat up with torn fins, fungus head, copepods
on fins, and has probably made it back to spawn several times in her lifetime. She fought hard and the second before I was able to get her under the net the hook popped out of her mouth. Luckily she was tired enough to where she floated for a second and I was able to net her. It was a awesome fish as my first steelhead for 2015.

Big Feather Hen

The spring-run aren’t in town yet but after a few good storms they should start trickling in. Drought conditions are going to be hitting the lowest of the lows this year and it’s not looking good.
I’ve been reading that the American River is fishing really poorly with very few steelhead returning this year. On paper it looks bad although I haven’t been out there so I can’t really judge.

Ellis Lake, Yuba goldfields

Fly Fishing For Bass: Entry #3 – It Has Begun

Location: Ellis Lake and Yuba Goldfields
Time: Afternoon
Weather: Warm with dailies around 65-70 degrees
Water Temp: High 50s Low 60s

There has been a warming trend going around the valley with temperatures near a consistent 65-70 degrees. This has been going on for about three weeks now and I believe it has woken up the fish. The bass are slowly making their way into the prespawn mode. It’s starting to get windy which means spring turnover time.

The daylight hours are now around 11 hours, therefore there is some truth to the correlation between bass activity and number of daylight hours. Most of the fish I have found were on shallow flats less than 6ft deep. No bass on beds yet.

I have been using a purple bunny leech with lead eyes. The bunny leech has been working very well and I find that purple has always been the color I’ve caught the most bass with. I tied one with some flash-a-bou and one without and it seems that the flash got more grabs than no flash. The sample size was small, therefore I will continue to keep testing.
Now that the prespawn bite is on I will begin focusing on being able to catch bass more consistently.

I will be working on:

-Fly patterns that work best
-Fishing different depths with different sinking tips or line
-Locating fish
-Finding when the topwater action starts
-Learning how the wind is my friend
-Figuring out the best retrieve

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