Bucks Creek, Bucks Lake, Grizzly Forebay

Exploring Bucks Creek and Grizzly Forebay

Bucks Lake is one of the major lakes in the Quincy area that is fed by two main inlets; Mill Creek and Bucks Creek. The area around Bucks Lake is well-known for its vast outdoor recreation use and the fishing opportunities are plentiful. I’ve been to Bucks Lake a few times before however these visits were during the mid-summer when the water temperature was at its warmest. I’ve always had eyes for the Bucks Lake’s tributaries and thought they were probably be the best places to check out once they were opened the Saturday preceding Memorial Day. My hope was to be able to fish both Bucks Creek and Mill Creek to find myself some brook trout as I haven’t caught one in a few years. My findings were unexpected but in the end some good fishing came out of it.

Bucks Creek was the first stream that I wanted to check out. I arrived at the creek at around 11am and was a bit disappointed to find that it was running very low. I didn’t know what I was expecting since this was a drought year. I waded upstream a few yards and didn’t find anything so I backtracked down to the lake. The water level at Bucks Lake didn’t look too bad whereas there was still plenty of water near the outlet of Bucks Creek. There were several families out fishing closer to the bank that had caught a few small rainbows earlier in the morning. I observed a ton of splashy rising and was hoping I could get in on the action. I waded across the creek and took some time to try and figure out what the fish were rising for. It was of course an insect that I did not have in my river/stream fly box, the flying ant. I did my best with what I had, I took out a royal wulff, pinched off a bit of the white wing hair, and clipped off the tail. I did manage to get a few rises with my modified pattern but ultimately failed to hook any fish. I switched to an indicator setup with midges and had a few takes however still no hook ups. I checked my watch and noticed that I had spent way too much time trying to convince these fish to eat. I left fishless and off to check out Mill Creek.

Mill Creek is perhaps the inlet that feeds the most water to Bucks Creek. Although I’ve only seen it from a map view I believe that the flows are always decent no matter the conditions. I drove all the way around the lake to find no parking at the day use area. The only parking was way up before the campground area and I was not feeling up to walking all that way to get to the Mill Creek. During my drive to get to Mill Creek I noticed a sign for Grizzly Forebay that peaked my interested. Instead of calling it quits I decided make a change of plans and check out Grizzly Forebay.

I did quite a bit of researched for this trip and could not pull anything significant up about Grizzly Forebay. There was one fishing report of trout being caught there on dry flies several years ago and information about the trout being wild rainbows and browns but that was about all I could find. From Lower Bucks it took me about 30-40 minutes to get the parking of Grizzly Forebay powerhouse. Unfortunately the gate to get to the powerhouse itself was closed which meant that I had to hike up the hill about half a mile to get to the water.

My first sight of Grizzly Forebay was a good one as the water level was not as low as I was imagining. I grew a bit anxious as I neared closer and noticed that the powerhouse wasn’t running. My plan was to fish below it whereas fish are typically stacked in the current picking off whatever floats by them. The access to the water was a bit difficult seeing as there were a ton of willows throughout the steep banks. I made way up the powerhouse and spotted a few trout tailing the bottom. I put on a pheasant tail nymph with a zebra midge, classic stillwater patterns to imitate a callibaetis and midge larva, and made a few casts. After several casts I watched as a fish came out of nowhere and swiped my flies. I managed to land it and caught my first Grizzly Forebay brown trout.

I hoofed it around the powerhouse towards the inlet at Grizzly Creek and spotted a few fish rising in the shallows. I could see several rises throughout the channel so I switched to a callibaetis emerger. I caught a few on a dry and eventually switched to naked nymphing a pheasant tail. I had a field day catching rainbows with a brown or two mixed in for every couple of bows.

Although Bucks Creek and Mill Creek were a bust, Grizzly Forebay was pretty fun and I look forward to getting out there again next time with a float tube. I didn’t catch anything huge but I have a feeling that there are some lunkers out there just waiting to be caught.

South Fork Yuba River

South Fork Yuba River Smallies

Summer is around the corner and I’ve been itching to find new spots for my favorite bass, the smallmouth bass. Big Chico Creek has always been my go-to creek for smallmouth fishing due to the ease of access and abundant bass population however the drive is a bit much unless I have other plans in town. For the past couple of months I’ve been doing research to find smallmouth streams that are closer to home and now that the weather has warmed up I can finally get out there to take a look.

Smallmouth bass can be found throughout many of the major watersheds in California occupying low elevation rivers and streams that run warm and have rocky structure. Although I can technically fishing for smallmouth in town out on the Feather and Yuba River my favorite places to fish for them are small creeks. There’s nothing quite like summer wet wading in a clear freshwater stream fly fishing for small yet strong smallmouth bass using poppers or streamers.

The South Fork of the Yuba River is the one of the rivers that I’ve been hoping to check out. The drive is relatively short and I’ve seen pictures and read articles of anglers catching plenty of smallmouth out there. I’ve scouted the SFYR at Bridgeport with my small family back in January but the water was a bit high and dirty. I didn’t fish it that visit however I am curious to know if there are any resident trout from Lake Englebright that run up the SFYR to spawn.

I typically don’t find bass until the water gets warmer in late May or June so after chasing trout for past several months I was finally able to do a warm-water fish trip. The SFYR was much lower this visit and looking crystal clear. We hiked about a half mile downstream and settled for a beachy spot. After playing with the kiddo, catching tadpoles and stacking rocks, I lined my fly rod with a woolly bugger to try and find some smallmouth.

The water was nice and warm however there was a strong wind that rippled the surface making it hard to spot fish. I found a pool below a small riffle that had tons of hardhead stacked up and caught one on my first cast. Seeing as the hardhead were in the moving water I waded upstream and found a slower pool where I caught my first SFYR smallmouth. There were periods throughout the day when the wind died down and the surface calmed where I was able to spot several more smallmouth in the 6” – 10” range. I tied on small popper and was able to get two grabs before the wind started up again.

I wasn’t able to explore this section of the SFYR as much as I wanted to however I was happy to have found what I set out to find. I know that the SFYR at Bridgeport can get pretty busy over the summer so I’m hoping I can figure out days where there are less people and enjoy a bent fly rod.

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