It's time for the annual camping & fishing trip with my nephews and once again the rivers are raging. My usual spots are blown out and I'm hoping to find something in the rts 4, 108, or 120 corridors, but will settle for anything under 3 hours drive from the bay area.
Any condition reports for areas like Middle Stan above Donnelly? Below Beardsley? Logistics prevent anything on the eastern slope or even McCloud. I'm hoping I can come up with smaller waters that are still approachable when they are running high.
Last year we had to bail and fished Cherry Lake, we had fun and caught plenty of fish but river fishing with fly rods is much more appealing. Kids are 8-14 and are successful with wet and dry flies, but also chuck hardware with spinning reels (panther martins, kastmasters, etc.)
I just called Ebbets pass sporting goods and they felt Sourgrass was still a good bet for North Stan and Beaver Creek. Any other suggestions?
120 and 108 closed still, I think 4 is open. You can check the caltrans site. The north stan. is currently at 1,470 cfs. In my opinion this is unfishable, Middle stan. is high and going up quickly. I'd stick to stillwater.
SR 108 [IN THE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA AREA & SIERRA NEVADA] 1-WAY CONTROLLED TRAFFIC AT VARIOUS LOCATIONS FROM 5 MI EAST TO 6 MI EAST OF STRAWBERRY (TUOLUMNE CO) FROM 0800 HRS TO 1400 HRS WEDNESDAY THRU FRIDAY THRU 6/10/11 - DUE TO MAINTENANCE - MOTORISTS ARE SUBJECT TO DELAYS OF UP TO 10 MINUTES
Looks like 108 will be open now...(ca dot web site @ 11:24 today)
Thanks guys, every hour that goes by it seems the water rises. This year I think I'm going to punt and just take them to Pine Crest Lake, they'll have a great time, they'll be safe, they'll catch fish even though it will be mostly spinning gear.
The fly fishing lessons will have to wait until another time.
The camping trip ended up being just one nephew, the one who was most gung ho for fly fishing so we bailed on the sierra and headed for Hat Creek. We fished various places of the upper and lower sections, planters up above in the campgrounds were about as plentiful as the crowds. In the wild trout section it was still pretty busy for a Monday / Tuesday, fish have been seeing a lot of pressure but we got a few as did others. Best of the trip was a nice wild 18" bow from a run in the lower section about halfway down stream from the 299 bridge.
Not much rising, a few people picked up some fish on the surface with caddis during the day, we were fishing nymphs trying anything that looked like what we found in the rocks or that we could kick up from the bottom. A black hare's ear size 10 seemed to work ok. There was a little bit of everything above and below the surface for bugs but nothing in particular that the fish were keyed on. I was hoping we would run into the famous green drake hatch but that didn't happen.
We wre happy to find some water that wasn't blown out.
