Upper Sacramento River Flows Skyrocket; Fishing Plummets.

Standing in the rain like a concrete pillar isn’t exactly the kind of thing that wins you love and support from the significant others (as in “you did what all day??”).

Still, with the weather finally turning wet and gray, chasing the Upper Sacramento’s BWO hatch wasn’t so much a decision as a foregone conclusion.

Chris Raine, Mike Lucia, Jimmy Reams and myself found ourselves standing around in a cold river for better than 2.5 hours waiting (in vain) for the BWOs - and the trout - to show.

Let’s Talk Stubborn

On Friday, the Upper Sacramento ran clear and low, and the trout were spooky and widely scattered.

The overnight rain drove the river up 4″-6″, and colored it to the point that we couldn’t see our wading boots in thigh deep water.

Still, Saturday’s weather was perfect - on-and-off drizzle, cloudy skies and cool-but-not-freezing temperatures.

We thought we’d see a strong hatch. Lots of fish. And plenty of #20 dries getting sucked under. And we were wrong.

Spiking River = Sinking Fortunes

Let’s get the ugly stuff out of the way: we saw few bugs, and exactly one rising fish to split between the four of us.

The likely culprit? I believe spiking river flows turn off bugs and trout.

Sustained moderte-to-high flows fish fine, but when flows rocket upward (see the river flow graph below), I see fish and bugs taking the day off until things stabilize.

Naturally, someone else has probably already come to a wholly different conclusion (Ian Rutter heads for his favorite big fish spots in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park when rain freshens summer flows, believing the added water gets big fish moving).

Still, yesterday becomes another data point in the quest to understand what makes fish tick, though anyone who seriously believes they’ll accumulate all the answers is seriously deluding himself - and largely missing the point.

It’s not the knowing that matters, it’s the looking. I’ll be looking more soon. See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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