A very wet system rolled into the Redding area on Saturday and persisted through mid day today. I fished two clients for steelhead on Saturday in Redding and had a very good good trip. Tim and Tyler hooked and landed numerous steelhead in the 3-4 pound range in spite of the horrible weather we endured all day long. Our most effective presentation was back trolling Mag Lip plugs, but we hooked some nice steelhead drifting egg beads as well.
Tim Duellman with the first steelhead of the day!
We started our day above the Posse Grounds boat launch and worked our way down as far as the Cypress Street bridge looking for steelhead. The most productive water was up high in the Posse Ground and Sundial section. I was very impressed with how good the bite was and as you can see by the pics I've attached to this report, all the fish we caught were very impressive. The darker colored Mag Lips were on fire, but we did pick up some steelhead on a brass colored plug as well.
Tyler with one of many beautiful Sacramento River steelhead he caught on 11/19.
Even with all the rain we received Saturday, when I started my two party trip today, I found the Sac to be in very good shape and I had high hopes for a repeat performance. Unfortunately, soon after we started fishing the clouds opened up and the rain came down in sheets for hours! We fished long and hard, but the bite shut down and we only managed about 4 bites, one nice steelhead caught and one lost soon after it was hooked. By 10:00 am, the Sac was clouding up and there was a ton of debris in the water making it very tough to fish plugs. We tried drifting beads and some other baits, but the trout just didn't respond.
Sacramento River flows by late afternoon.
At the time of this report, Sacramento River flows are over 20,000 cfs and it looks like the river is going to be un fishable for the foreseeable future. I will be looking ahead into early December now for future trips for late fall Kings and steelhead. On a positive note, this water will surely bring us some fresh salmon and hopefully they will be available in the Cottonwood area when the river drops back into shape. In the meantime, I'll be busy making bass and trout baits in preparation for some Shasta Lake fishing!
