Middle Fork Feather River, Yellow Creek

Memorial Day Get-A-Way

by Matt
Lower Yellow Creek

After a long week, this Memorial Day weekend was a perfect time to get away from the world and fly fish. Manda’s parents were out of town so we planned a house-sitting, fly-fishing, and get-away weekend. The weather on this particular weekend was overcast but warming. We were told that Quincy had been getting rain for the past few days which was good news. My target this weekend were trophy trout on the Middle Fork of the Feather River fly fishing with streamers.

Yellow Creek
On the way up to Quincy we planned a stop in Belden to hike and fish Yellow Creek. Yellow Creek is a tributary of the North Fork Feather River and is better known for its spring creek fly fishing in the Humbug Valley outside of Chester.  The spring creek section eventually enters a canyon where it forms the traditional riffle-run-pool. I’ve fished Yellow creek at the mouth once before but stopped about a quarter of a mile in, so on this trip we set out to explore further upstream.

First Hellgrammite Find!

When we arrived around noon, I noticed that the weather was warm and overcast; the fishing should be good today. Every fly fishermen knows that flipping over rocks can be a great way to gather intel about the stream your fishing. Match the hatch. I found a lot of mayfly nymphs and even a hellgrammite larvae this trip so I tried nymphing first.

The water was pretty low and nymphing was unproductive so I tied on a red humpy and the rest is history. Although dinks, these trout fought harder than most trout their size. My first catch bolted downstream as soon as it was hooked and the chase was on. Past the boulders, rapids, and finally into a pool where it was landed. I didn’t realize I was steelhead fishing! Overall we hiked about half a mile in and the fishing was pretty good until the sun came out.

Yellow Creek Fighter

Lower Yellow Creek is absolutely breath-taking! The clear cool water reflecting the yellow rocks, the warm rain rippling the water, and the canyon walls full of green. This creek is one of the reason why Plumas County is one of my favorite counties to fish. There are endless beautiful streams to explore and tons of fish to catch.

Scenic Yellow Creek

Feather River Middle Fork
The Feather River Middle Fork is truly a wild and scenic fishery. Enclosed within canyon walls, the only way to enter and explore the Middle Fork is to hike, rock climb, wade, bush-whack, and boulder hop. If you want to feel like a true adventurer then this place is for you. The Middle Fork is difficult to access but extremely rewarding in fishing and sight-seeing.

Scenic Middle Fork

The target I was searching for today was a trophy trout. A sculpin pattern on a sink-tip was my go to rig. I had never fished a sculpin pattern before so I didn’t have much confidence at first, but that quickly changed when I hooked my first fish.

Covering water is the number one rule when fishing streamers. You want to look for a big aggressive fish that is pissed off or hungry enough to eat a 4” sculpin. After covering a bit of water I found a deep slow run that looked like a prime holding spot. I threw my prototype Hero Sculpin upstream and started stripping in my line to imitate a darting sculpin. Halfway through I stopped for a second because I thought I hit a snag. It wasn’t a snag. On my second cast I made the same retrieve and got a take, and its a big one! First fish, trophy fish!

Middle Fork Trophy Bow

I continued to adventure downstream and hooked several nice fish. The clear water allowed me to watch as the fish chased and attacked my sculpin fly with no mercy. Their response was an aggressive kill reaction rather than feeding behavior. Most of the fish I caught were over 12”, a nice change from catching dinks. After about 6 hours in I finally lost my sculpin fly on a snag and decided to call it a day.

There is a lot of water I haven’t been able to explore on the Middle Fork and I am looking forward to seeing a different part of the river the next time I visit.

No dinks today

Fly fishing with a sculpin pattern is an awesome way to look for trophy fish. Now that I’ve discovered how well they work, I will continue to tie and use them. I’m sure someday one of my “fish of a life-time” will be caught on a sculpin pattern

Big Chico Creek, Deer Creek, North Fork Feather River, Yellow Creek

Small Fish Up. Big Fish Down

by Matt
Yellow Creek

As July becomes the hottest month of the year a lot of the big fish have disappeared leaving the smaller fish the dominant catch of the summer. This past week I’ve taken the time to explore some new water and while my results were pretty disappointing, its always nice to have an adventure.

Deer Creek
I’ve been fish Red Bridge with great success. I know almost every hole that produces the biggest fish in the creek and with that knowledge I decided to look elsewhere for big fish. I drove out to K Road and waded upstream close to Lower Deer Creek Falls. Although there were some really nice holes I didn’t catch anything too exciting. Most of the fish were around 5” by far some of the smallest fish I’ve caught on the creek.

Deer Creek Trout

I left around 7:00pm and fished above Red Bridge and got into some bigger fish.
A few days later I decided to fish above Potato Patch Campground and near Upper Deer Creek Falls. I hooked into a few trout that ripped some line out probably around 14” but I didn’t land any. Due the to drought perhaps the water is slightly colder upstream and the trout have migrated up? I saw a few salmon in the deeper holes which is a good sign despite the drought.

North Fork Feather River
Manda and I went up HWY 70 to fish and look for blackberries. We stopped around Storrie to fish the boulders. I tight-lined a stonefly and mayfly nymph for a bit but after checking the water temperature at around 70 – 73 degrees I decided to look elsewhere for fish.

Yellow Creek
We drove further up towards Belden and I fished Yellow Creek. There is something special about fishing the streams in the Plumas National Forest, it’s quite magical and I don’t really know why or how to explain it. The scenery is just amazing.

The creek was easy to access and the water was colder so after covering some water I got into a few fish that were your typical creek sized trout. I was hoping to catch some bigger fish that swam up the creek from the North Fork due to the warmer water but I didn’t have much luck.

Yellow Creek Trout

Big Chico Creek
The smallie fishing is still good. There have been schools of big pike minnow that I haven’t been able to get into, but the smallies are still plentiful and aggressive. I saw a few big ones that were hiding in the shade but I couldn’t get them to take. Still lots of fun.

BCC Smallie

I’m kind of fed up with summer. I’ll probably just take it easy until late summer early fall for the fishing to pick back up again. Weather is too damn hot.

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