An Awesome Weekend on the upper Sacramento River
Last weekend my wife and I went up to the town of Dunsmuir in Northern California. It's right at the base of Mount Shasta and the Upper Sacramento river runs right through the town.
This trip was my birthday present. As part of that present she bought me a full day of guided fly fishing on the Upper Sac. with guide Bill Carnazzo. Bill is a great guy. He has homes in Dunsmuir and Forresthill. Forresthill is only about 25 miles from where I live and he guides the local rivers as well so I think I'll be using his services again.
I just got the photos from Bill Friday evening so I haven't posted about it yet. But here's the story.
Bill picked me up at 6:00 am and we drove to [a secret spot] where he showed me his "short line nymphing system" and how to use it. On the very first cast I hooked a beast of a fish. I nearly had him in hand when he shook off the barbless hook. Oh well. We were going to catch and release him anyway.
I picked up about 6 or 7 smaller rainbow trout during the morning as I learned where the pocket water is and how to recognize it. I also needed to learn how to recognize the very subtle strikes that trout will do. Bill said that if I caught all the fish that were striking my fly (when I didn't notice it) I'd have about 25 to 30 fish that day. So I started to really watch the inline indicator for any movement that was in any way out of the ordinary. Most of the time I'd be striking when the split shot was just bouncing on the bottom. But sometimes it would be a trout. Here's the first of the larger ones that I caught.
I was learning a LOT about how to fish pocket water in a river. It's amazing to be able to analyze a river and think "They have to be right there, and there and there." Then you go fish those spots and sure enough, there are fish in those pockets.
We hiked up the river a bit to try another spot using a "hopper dropper" system. I really had to learn to watch that hopper for anything that looked out of the ordinary. I did catch a couple decent size trout on that system.
After about 8 hours of intense fishing (My shoulders were so sore from casting and high sticking) Bill says "Let's go catch a big fish". So we hiked up river just a bit more.
On our hike up the river we found this little guy.
We also found a small rattlesnake but we didn't take any pictures. We just walked around him.
We found a small stretch of white water and I hooked and lost a gigantic trout. He had to be about 20" long or more. All I saw was a big brown tail fin slap the water and vanish.
I kept working all the little pockets of soft water and transition lines. It was getting to be the end of the day and we both decided "OK, one last cast". On that last cast something big hit the fly. I fought it and fought it when the line when slack.
"I think I lost him" I said. So I started to reel in the line. Then the line started wiggling again and I realized the fish was still on, it had just gone down and sat on the bottom. We fought and waited until he was tired enough to come in. When we landed him it was the biggest fish of the day.
We revived the fish and let him go. He gave us one strong kick and was gone in an instant.
So we headed back to the hotel and had a big late lunch and some great beer to celebrate. It was without a doubt the best day of fishing I've ever had.
Well, the next day we drove back home. We stopped off at Castle Crag state park to do a hike with Thunder (Our hotel was dog friendly) and enjoyed a meandering drive down highway 99 through northern California farm country.
How could the weekend get any better?
Well, when I got home I checked my email and discovered that I had won the FAOL Drawing for of a day of guided fly fishing (for 2) on the Big Horn River in Montana. So we're going to plan next year's vacation around a trip to Yellowstone and the Big Horn river to catch some big Montana fish.
Yeah, It was a good weekend. And it was just a month or 2 ago when I was wondering if fly fishing was for me. I was so frustrated at not catching fish. But in one day with a guide I caught more fish than I've caught in an entire season. And more importantly, learned a lot about fly fishing and how to recognize pocket water. I can't wait to get back out on the river.
I keep telling my wife that was the best birthday present EVER!
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