Butte Creek

Butte Creek Silver

Beautiful Wild Winter Steel

This Saturday I landed my first Butte Creek steelhead. A nice 20” fish on a 3wt. It just goes to show that there are steelhead that run through Butte Creek and if you work the river hard enough you just might strike silver. Steelhead can be very hard to find in this creek so I’m sure a lot of anglers who know where to look keep the locations top secret.

This fish took a size 18 midge dropper that I tied on 4x tippet and would rush away as I approached her with my net. I played her carefully taking my time to get her in as soon as I could as well as trying not to break my light tippet. Several attempts later I felt the sweet and exciting achievement of landing my first Butte Creek steelhead.

The flows are going up and down but should stabilize soon with all the on again off again rain. It should help bring in some more winter fish.

Butte Creek, Feather River, Yuba River

Winter Is Coming

Its starting to get cold and the fishing is in a weird transitional late fall early winter limbo. I’ve been finding that sometimes the fishing is good and other times its really poor. I’ve spent some time on the Feather, Yuba, and Butte creek chasing trout and steelhead. Finding and hooking into a fish isn’t too hard, its the playing and landing that I’ve had the worst luck with.

Yuba River Bow

Butte Creek
I fished Butte Creek after the latest rain storm and the flows were low around 127 CFS that day. The water was a bit off color and there were little signs of salmon around. I must have seen three salmon in a two mile stretch. I hooked and quick-released an 18”+ steelhead on a soft hackle which made it a pretty worth day. Beautiful fish, I wish I could have netted it and taken a picture. Note to self take your time when fighting a steelhead on a 3wt rod. I went 1/5 the whole day which is great considering I didn’t think I’d hook anything. Maybe with some more rain it’ll put more steelhead in the system. Here is to more rain.

Little Resident Butte Trout



Feather River
The Feather has been hit and miss. There are always steelhead around but its still pretty crowded. The fish are still taking eggs but its pretty much a salmon graveyard out there now. The fish are scattered throughout the low flow and with some rain, there should be a push of hatchery fish coming up the river. I want the high flow to start fishing well because I’m getting pretty fed up fishing the same runs and riffles again and again.

Yuba River
I wish I could lie and say that the fishing was good on the Yuba. For the last two days I’ve fished it I’ve only caught one fish. The first day it was sight casting to suckers and the following morning it was sight casting to a nice trout. I didn’t see a single person hook up the whole time I was there. I met up with some other anglers next to my car and they said they hooked three. So I don’t know.

Unsuspecting sucker

I’ll probably keep trying my luck on these rivers until I plan a trip to the Trinity or the American for some big ol winter steelhead.

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