Fly Fishing the Upper Sacramento on a Rainy Saturday

A rain-soaked Upper Sacramento River from under the brim of my hat.

I said I’d fish, and damn if I’m not a man of my word, despite steady rain and cold temperatures. The temperature in Mt. Shasta was only 40 degrees, and I found myself digging out the winter fly fishing clothes I’d put away a couple weeks ago.

Dave Edmondson and I did the usual two-step (”Where should we fish? I dunno, where do you want to fish?”), finally wetting a line just after 1:00.

We fished for 45 minutes without a bite, then ran downriver to a less-fished area with a good dry fly run.

Just as we arrived, a very light (and mixed) BWO and March Brown hatch started. The fish weren’t rising freely, but they were coming up often enough to offer some hope to a pair of cold, wet fly fishermen.

A #12 Adams worked — but not as well as Dave Roberts’ downwing Catskill dun.

We managed to get bit on both BWO and March Brown dries — switching vainly back and forth looking for the magic bullet — but ultimately, the fish seemed to prefer the March Brown.

In fact, switching back to an interesting downwing, Catskill-style March Brown dry (as tied by Dave Roberts) paid off with a quick couple of bites, and my final tally was four fish landed, seven hooked, and a bunch missed.

Not exactly wide open fishing, but it wasn’t exactly a wide open kind of day.

A cold, wet Dave Edmondson drops a dry a foot off the far bank.

My biggest trout was in the 15″ range, and it was a pretty as Upper Sac trout always are. Less pretty was the stonefly shuck we found on a streamside brush (trout probably think they’re pretty — just before they eat them).

We didn’t see any stoneflies flying (they prefer warm days) but there are a lot of stonefly nymphs in the water and I wouldn’t show up without a few of the dries. Just in case.

A stonefly shuck in great shape.

While it was raining downcanyon, I drove through snow to get back to Trout Underground World Headquarters. Right now — at 10:00 pm — it’s snowing hard enough to mess up reception of the satellite TV, and snow’s starting to stick on the ground.

That’s how it’s been this year; the water temperatures in Dunsmuir still haven’t hit 50 degrees (it’s warmer downriver), and every time the sun threatens to warm things up, a cold front rolls in.

Flows remain ridiculously low for this time of year (still below 1000 cfs despite the rain) and my impression is one of a river that wants to bust lose for spring, but simply can’t due to the lack of warm weather.

Think warm thoughts, and as always, I’ll see you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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