Here’s How to Check River Flows in Siskiyou County Rivers

Despite highly variable weather, fishermen are reporting good results on Siskiyou County’s rivers, streams and lakes, though you’ll want to check flows before you fish anywhere.

On some of the area’s smaller streams, the flows are apparently just fine – if this photo (taken last weekend) is any indication.

Want to check river flows?

Click here to check the Upper Sacramento River flows (at the delta).

Click here to check the new flow gauge on the McCloud River at Ah Di Nah.

And here’s a list of all the California flow gauges.

Spring’s Happening in Siskiyou County. Don’t miss all it has to offer!

Siskiyou County’s Fishing Forecast: Spring’s Late, But Fishing’s Great

Spring offers some of the best fishing of the year in Siskiyou County – both for conventional tackle anglers and fly fishermen.

This year’s cool (and downright cold) weather has delayed the hatches – good news for fishermen who haven’t yet made their plans.

On both the lakes and rivers, water temperatures are rising, and the fish (mostly trout) are becoming more active – as are the things they eat, including the big bugs the trout and fly fishermen both love.

An Upper Sacramento Green Drake (photo courtesy TroutUnderground.com)

And even if the fishing’s tough, the mountains in spring are almost impossibly beautiful.

Simply put, Siskiyou County’s almost never a bad place to be.

The Fly Fishing Can Be Great – If The Rivers Aren’t Too High

Fly fishermen are especially drawn to the hatches of big bugs – the Golden Stoneflies, the salmon flies, and later (some years), the fabled Green Drakes.

And why not?

A Golden Stonefly (photo courtesy TroutUnderground.com)

The big stoneflies represent a sizable meal for trout, making this one of the few (short) windows where the biggest fish in the river may happily eat a big dry fly.

The strikes are vicious, and the fishing – especially in the evenings – can be nonstop fun.

Tempering the excitement is the real potential for unfishably high spring flows – as the weather warms, the snow melts, the rivers rise, and the fly fishermen get grumpy.

The wet winter of 2010 saw our snowpack grow to 140% of normal, and spring has been slow in coming, so the rivers have been easing into runoff conditions.

In essence, the rivers are still fishable (but wading and fishing is tough). They remain high – and may become largely unfishable for a short time once the weather warms to really melt the snow.

That’s OK; while Siskiyou County’s blue-ribbon trout waters are the main attraction for fly fishermen, our lakes – and a few small streams – still offer great fishing.

The Lakes

Siskiyou County’s Lake Siskiyou continues to offer excellent fishing to anglers – both boaters and bank-bound anglers.

As the weather warms, trout fishermen will have to go deeper, but the smallmouth bass wake up – and fishermen ignore feisty, hard-battling smallmouth bass at their own peril.

A summer evening spent catching smallmouth bass on small poppers and surface lures – often from a float tube, which is a floating easy chair after all – is an evening well spent.

Castle Lake sits a mile high, so trout fishing remains good most of the summer. Many, many other lakes dot Siskiyou County, though some remain inaccessible until early summer due to snow.

The best places to find information on river levels and fishing?

Go to Visit Siskiyou’s fishing page, which offers links to flow gauges, guides and fly/tackle shops.

Siskiyou County’s Small Streams Offer Excellent Fly Fishing – And The Potential For Exploration Fun

While most fly fishermen are drawn to Siskiyou County to fish its blue-ribbon rivers – the Upper Sacramento, the McCloud and the Klamath – don’t overlooks the fishing opportunities offered by its small streams.

Along with smaller trout and few heavy hatches, anglers will find solitude on small streams – a draw for many fly fishermen.

Fly fishing Siskiyou County's small streams can be rewarding

Finding fishable small streams is half the fun; poring over topo maps and exploring the streams found there has become a highly refined part of the sport known as “bluelining.”

Blueliners are not afraid of a little exploration (or a little hike), and finding your own small stream can be a hugely rewarding experience.

Enjoy Spring in Siskiyou County!

Ten Tips For Successful Spring Fly Fishing in Siskiyou County

Spring fly fishing can be the most rewarding fishing of the year – provided you match the right techniques to the conditions.

Siskiyou County fly fishing guide Craig Nielsen offers up his Top 10 Tips for fishing in spring on his website, and they include useful tidbits like:

Tip #7. Match your Technique to the Water Type

Most folks have their best success covering big water in spring with an indicator and nymphs but it is not necessary to limit your strategy to one technique. Trout in springtime have been hungry for a while and a surprising number of them can be drawn to the surface opportunistically. Covering the water with a large dry fly with some weighted dropper nymphs can be equally or even more effective than deep water nymphing. Taking the indicator off and high sticking the heads of runs and pools also can aid in getting your flies down in front of the fishes face to get a grab. Save your small mayfly dry patterns and finer tippets to match the hatch should you be so lucky.

You can read therest of Craig’s tips here.

Enjoy spring in Siskiyou County!

Fishing Lake Siskiyou

Spring has arrived in Siskiyou County, and the fishing on Lake Siskiyou is excellent.

And even when it isn’t excellent, it’s definitely pretty:

Come enjoy Siskiyou County today.

Upper Sac and Klamath are ready for you!

Flows on the Upper Sac also high, 3,000 to 4,000 cfs and will likely remain so as runoff from an above normal snowpack has begun. Some exceptional fish are podded in some of the bigger runs making this one of the best times of year to pick up your best fish of the season; several friends have enjoyed this good fortune in the past few weeks. The Klamath River still has a few spring run steelhead to be had on the swing but with the recent release of steelhead smolts it can be a challenge to get to them. For those so inclined the smolts will attack caddis dries during the hatch and small nymphs most anytime with abandon.  Salmonflies are on the way, so now is the time to schedule a great local guide for this hatch as available dates in late May and June are becoming far and few between.

With The General Trout Season Opener Around the Corner, How’s The Fishing in Siskiyou County?

With many of Siskiyou County’s best fishing rivers due to open on Saturday, we thought we’d offer up the forecasts of a pair of local fly fishermen.

First, local outfitter Craig Nielsen of Shasta Trout offers up his latest fishing report, which – if you read between the lines – offers a lot of information about how his clients have been clobbering fish on the Upper Sacramento, Lower Sacramento, and Pit River.

His take? The Upper Sacramento is high but fishing well (you have to pick your spots – much of the river’s unfishable). The Pit River is fishing beautifully, but is crowded. And things are looking good for the McCloud and Fall River openers, though access may be an issue on the McCloud.

Meanwhile, local fly fishing blog The Trout Underground offers his typically quirky take on the area’s rivers and fishing prospects here, though we’ve excerpted one small portion for you:

This year – due to an above-normal snowpack in California’s mountains and rainy/snowy spring weather, a lot of rivers will likely be high.

(Note I said “high” and not “unfishably high.” The last time I pronounced the Upper Sac “blown out and unfishable,” someone wrote to say they’d had their best day ever on the river.)

What follows is a loose assemblage of rumors, half-truths, guide promotion and outright lies.

At no time should any of my readers actually believe anything they read in this forecast (I’m a fly fisherman after all), nor change their carefully laid plans based on this information.

(Void where prohibited by law.)

Click here to read his lengthy forecast on river flows, access, what’s hot, and what isn’t.

Enjoy the 2010 trout season!

Fly Fishing the Upper Sacramento

The Upper Sac is very high from snowmelt and runoff, but it is flowing clear and is fishable. Dedicated upper Sac anglers can find a few fish to take by concentrating on the deeper, slower moving pockets and pools, but it may be more work than it’s worth until runoff subsides later this spring.

The key to success when fishing high spring water on the upper sac is using plenty of weight to get your flies down, and concentrating on the deeper pools and slower-moving pockets. The fish will try to get away from the heavy currents, and can sometimes be concentrated in certain calmer waters.

Fly Fishing on the Klamath

FRIENDS FISHING THE KLAMATH

Our longtime good friend Ross joined us to explore a lower drift on the Klamath River he had not yet seen.  We dedicated the day to the swing and loaded up a couple new rods with some new lines which can be an adventure in itself.  Ross has a new twelve and a half foot Scott T2h eight weight that he has tried to match a number of lines to.  On this day he found the sweetheart he was looking for, a 600 grain Rio Skagit that balanced so well with a 10? T14 tip and his own beautiful blue and black  tied Intruder that he swung up a bright chrome springer Steelhead.  Craig sampled some new lines including Rio’s 325 grain short head Skagit Flight on his favorite switch rod, Sage’s Z-Axis six weight eleven footer and found the perfect fit.  It also turned out to fit a bit better than Air Flo’s 360 grain short head Skagit on his Scott twelve and a half foot T2h six weight though he didn’t have as much luck finding willing fish as Ross.

Lower Sacramento River Fly Fishing Trip

by: Shasta Trout
Guide: Graig Nielson, March 31, 2010

Dustin with Trophy Rainbow

The Lower Sacramento was exceptional for the action, numbers of fish as well as the size of the fish we found.  We hooked several trophy fish including a couple that would make a season, let alone your day.  We even landed a couple while the biggest ones got away of course.  One fish was so hot, it freight trained upstream with so much power we thought at first is was a Salmon.  It was not, but was Salmon sized.