This is my 1st posting to the forum. A little background on me:
My username indicates that most of the time I spend surf casting big topwater lures for stripers, and pulling out the 10 weight on the rare occasions where the Pacific Ocean is calm enough and the fish have moved in close. I love to fish for trout but don't really have the time to mount missions up to the far reaches of the state, and since I live near the ocean I take advantage of it. I'm a reasonable fly fisherman but have plenty of rough edges. I practice catch and release but am not adverse to keeping a hatchery fish now and then for the table if the body of water can support it. I was away for much of the time in the past 15 years and now have settled down a bit and looking forward to getting into NorCal fly fishing.
I fished Putah creek for the 1st time yesterday - just had a sudden day off available, put the key in the ignition, and I drove to the creek having only a map showing sites #1 - #5.
I think the flows were quite low, but I managed to have some success finding a few riffles flowing in to pools, and since I didn't really have any idea of what to use, stuck to generics. I managed to get several tiny fish, and a couple of nice rainbows nymphing. I used a classic combo of a #14 hare's ear with a #20 flashback pheasant tail dropper. All hit the dropper. They were hard fighting, well conditioned fish.
I didn't know where I was going and so may have just missed the more wide-open areas, but the stream reminded me a lot of fishing some of the tributaries of the Waikato river in New Zealand - lots of brush creeping and very, very careful casting. I only was in a couple of spots all day where I could do any kind of back-cast.
The other thing I noticed whilst traipsing about was that there are some crayfish (or, crawdads if you will) of impressive size crawling around! I also ran across a few carcasses with missing tails.
I'm thinking that there must be some big denizens in the creek if they are big enough to eat the crayfish.
So, I guess my two questions to those who know are:
1) Was yesterday (Oct. 27th) a bit on the low side, or is this the normal height of the creek?
2) Could it be worthwhile to fish the deep pools using a crayfish pattern with a sinking line?
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach and man to fish and he'll be out of your hair for the entire weekend."
The big crayfish are the local lunch snacks for the furry mammal denizens of the creek. Alot of times you'll see them chomping on them sitting on the rocks. Not too say the fish don't get their fair share, but the most likely culprits are the otters.
Actually, the flows have been lower than normal lately, and they have been fluctuating as well. If you click on the flow link on the homepage of this site you can see what the usual flows should be.
hey beachboy your story pretty much sums my story up as well, i've been a total sal****er guy for years now, used to fish alot of trout years ago. and i am defenitly rough around the edges when it comes to flyfishin. I just read the posts hear regularly and i have learned a hell of alot. I think most people concertrate around access #4 and #5 and i like to fish up around #3 near the park host area. and yeah the otters are the ones eatin the crawfish, i've seen them eatin them the past two weekends, i got some pretty cool pics. of them doin it.
