Hex, Lake Almanor

Chasing Hex

by Matt

The weather this June has been the most inconsistent it’s been for a long time; hot and cold with an emphasis on hot. We are currently going on a second week of heat advisory with temperatures in the triple digits. The only way to escape hell is to move up.

It has been over three years since I’ve fished the hex hatch and my plan for my weekend was to fish Yellow Creek in the morning then skip on over to Butt Lake for the hex hatch in the evening. On my way to Yellow Creek in the morning a rock hit my oil pan causing it to break spilling oil everywhere. Luckily I had only made it about half a mile off HWY 89 and was rescued by my father-in-law. The guy at Almanor Tow who towed my car back to Quincy just happen to be Hal Janssen’s son. Small world…

With my car out of commission I borrowed my in-laws jeep to fish the Almanor hex hatch. I was out on the water by 6pm and joined a battalion of tubers. I brought two 6WTs one with Type 6 full sinking line and the other with floating line.

I brought my cheapo fish finder with me this time to figure out Geritol Cove’s depth. I found that about 20 feet off the beach area there appears to be a rapid drop off leveling off at about 33ft. The middle of the cove towards the inlet was deep at almost 40 feet. The end of the cove leveled off at around 14ft.

Fishwise the fish finder can detect fish however the LED display reads every fish the same size which helps but doesn’t. According to the cheapo fish finder all the fish were on the bottom with a rare sighting of fish in the mid-column.

Lake Almanor’s current storage is 946,340 AF which is about 72% full. The lake was looking great and now with an idea of how deep it is now I was ready to rock and roll.

You gotta fish it deep. Let it sink. I hardly ever retrieve. Get it down deep and troll it. If your line is straight down you aren’t going fast enough. Give it a few twitches every once in a while.

These are some of the strategies I overheard while fishing this evening. This deep drop trolling method works however to me it seemed a bit boring. I fished my rig like I usually do, let it sink to the bottom and make one or two strips of about two inches of line to mimic an emerging hex. I was able to get four strikes throughout the evening and landed one nice brown trout and a new species I hadn’t caught yet, a chonky brown bullhead.

Unfortunately my dry rod didn’t get to see any action. There were so many bugs coming off that the fish were most likely full by the time the duns started popping up. Although I didn’t catch a whole lot of fish this year’s hex hatch, mingling with out-of-towners and seeing others catching fish was fun. That’s all part of the hex experience.

Stinson Beach

Surprise At Stinson Beach

by Matt

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the beach and now my wife and I get to go the beach as a family of three. Our hearts were set on a two day overnighter at Stinson Beach. The moon and stars were aligned with the perfect tides, incoming high tide at 8am and 8pm both during low light periods what could go wrong?

This was our first long distance trip as a family and my son who is now three months did fairly well on the car ride there. Stinson Beach was windy during our stay with winds at 13 – 15MPH and gusts up +20MPH. I attempted to fish in the evening of the first day and fighting the wind was very difficult. The surf was quite choppy and the entire coast appeared murky with a clarity of about 6’’ – 12’’. Conditions were rough and I ended the night with no grabs.

The following day I got up early at sunrise around 6am and was out on the surf to try my luck again. The wind was pretty much nonexistent in the morning and I had no trouble controlling my presentation. I worked my way covering water all the way down to the southern rocks. I’m fairly experienced with fishing the surf and know where to look for fish but every spot that should have had fish was empty. I dug out plenty of sand crabs along the shore so the amount of food didn’t appear to be an issue. The fish just weren’t out on the surf.

The rig I was fishing with was my go-to 4’ of Seaguar fluorocarbon with a chartreuse clouser and simple shrimp tied on to the tag end of a blood loop on a 250 grain sink-tip line. I changed flies a couple of times to see if it was my patterns but to no avail.

Frustrated and perplexed by my unsuccessful attempts of catching any fish, I looked up any information I could find online about the current surf fishing conditions. From what little information I could gather the coast along the bay area has been experiencing a bit of red tide algae bloom. This could explain the murkiness in the middle June and the poor fishing conditions. While out on the surf I observed the wildlife, primarily the birds and sea lions, gathering and possibly feeding just outside the breakers. This leads me to think that the fish were possibly out there as well.

I tried again the second morning and noticed a few other surf anglers out as well. We all got skunked; at least in regards to fish. I caught stuff. Five dungeness crab, the same amount of crabs I had caught the previous morning. It’s too bad I didn’t rent a kitchenette and bring a crab pot but now I know better for next time.

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