Nor Cal Valley Report

It has been a good start to our October season. The salmon are in the rivers for the most part and starting to do their egg drop thing. The name of the game has been to fish the river with the most salmon and tie on your favorite egg patterns. Eggs. Eggs. Eggs. Gotta love this time of year. Check out the quick report below of what is happening in the north valley.

Yuba: The Yuba last week was en fuego!!!! I had the 2 best days that I have ever had on the Lower Yuba since I have been guiding it the last 5 years. I seriously had 2 days over there where we hooked 55+ rainbows on beads. To be honest there are not that many salmon spawning in the river but when you find a handful of them there are plenty of willing trout below trying to gobble up those eggs. What was nice is that the quality of the fish has increased over the last week. Late September it was all 10-12" fish but last week we started seeing more than half the fish from 15-18". The hot flies have been eggs. You can catch random fish on caddis patterns like birds nest and pupahs as well as on rubberlegs.

Lower Sac: The Sac egg bite is not in full swing. There are fish eating eggs over there but it is not gang busters by any means. The river is still pretty average for the middle of October. Lots of 20 fish days. What I have been surprised about is watching rainbows eat nymphs in the middle of redds. Places they should be eating the egg they are preferring the caddis. I personally feel that the Sac egg bite is going to be late this year. There are still salmon rolling around in the deep water and not getting up in the shallows. So it looks like the end of October is going to be prime over there. Now if you can get out there on a cloudy day then they will most likely eat eggs the entire time. But that is a total different story. This time of year clouds and rain make the fish stupid. So dont be afraid to get a little wet because the pay-off could be huge.

Feather: I have spent 2 days on the Feather in the last week and there is a good number of salmon over there. There are a handful of steelhead in the system but not gang busters yet. We were having decent days with hooking random fish throughout the system. Most of the fish are the typical 18-20 half pounders which the Feather is famous for. These fish are hot and pissed off right now. Really bright fish for Feather standards and they are very unhappy when you hook them. There is a random adult around if you are lucky enough to hook one. I had a client land a 26" buck yesterday which was pretty awesome for the Feather standards. On the lower part of the low-flow we are still hooking fish on nymphs while almost every fish at the top is coming on egg patterns. It seems like the word is out though because there are quite a few people out there wading around trying to find some chrome.

Well...............there you have it. The lastest info on our North Valley Fishing Rivers. To sum it up fishing is good and time to get out and test your egg nymphing skills.

If you are looking to do some fishing in the next 6 weeks you can find my limited openings below:

Nov: 8-10, 15-16, 18, 22, 27-30 (27th is the last weekend day open!)

Tight Lines!