Sacramento River

Shad Are In Town

by Matt
Thumbs Up For a Bend Rod

Monday evening on the Sac marked the first day I finally found some shad this year. Although I missed more than I caught, I managed to land 3 nice lookin shad on my switch rod before calling it a night.

There were a lot of bank anglers combat fishing a distances upstream from the Washout. Luckily, I found a nice spot and pretty much fished the entire evening next to one guy until another showed up. Flies outfished the typical green grub rig.
I’ll definitely be getting out there more now that they are here.

Swinging for Shad

There was one shad I kept for eats. My last and most previous experience of eating shad was basically just eating a bunch of bones. After food processing and frying it up, I was able to make sorta like a breakfast fish patty with no bones. It was pretty good. The taste is similar to catfish but more flaky and fishy.

The following evening I went out and gottem again! All quick-release but the take is the only thing that matters.

Deer Creek, Horseshoe Lake, Sacramento River

Busy at Work, Busy on the Water

by Matt
Scenic Deer Creek

This week has been one of the longest and oddest weeks I’ve had in a while. The kiddos at school were acting up, I was sick Wednesday morning, there was a flash thunderstorm Thursday, and the fishing was pretty off.
Although the fishing was sort of difficult, I spent some time at Horseshoe Lake, Sacramento River, and Deer Creek catching a few here and there.



Horseshoe Lake
I’ve been wetting my line at Horseshoe a couple time this week in hopes of finding carp. I caught a cat one day and got skunk the next two trips. Monday I fished with Patrick, a friend from the fly shop, and he had all the luck that evening. Patrick says he’s never caught anything on a fly at Horseshoe but that evening he landed a good 4# bass and a nice cat while I caught the skunk. It was nice to see someone else catch some fish on a fly out there besides me for once. I fished the lake a few more times to be skunked again. It must be those darn east winds. The fish were scattered all over the lake and were very off this week.

Splish Splash

Sacramento River
I want to catch a shad. Its still a bit early for them to be in Chico in numbers but it never hurts to try. Although no shad were caught I did manage to catch a small hatchery steelie on the swing with a soft hackle. Its weird that there are trout out there because the water is pretty warm.

Washout Trout

Deer Creek
One of my favorite things about Deer Creek is that when I’m fishing, the majority of the time I’m fishing alone in the tranquility of nature. No one is ever on the water when I’m there. I made plans and opted out on going Saturday opening day because it was a bit too cool around 60 degrees. On Sunday the temperature range jumped up to a nice 70-75 degrees just as predicted. It was time to head up to Deer Creek for the first time this year. While I was there I saw hatches of midges, march browns, and a few caddis; bugs were pretty much everywhere.

Fish of the Day

My day started below Red Bridge where I fished my usual holes. I must have caught about 30+ fish on dries this trip. It feels good to get some action back on the 2wt. Although most of the fish were around 5-7” no nymphing was needed. Usually I start catching the 10”+ bigger fish as summer rolls in.

Salmon Smolt
 

After fishing the catch-and-release section, I fished above the Upper falls to catch some dinner and ended up with 3 pan-sized fish while releasing a ton of smaller ones. Overall a great productive day.

1 2 3 4 5