Ellis Lake, Horseshoe Lake, Paradise Lake

Warmwater Mayhem

by Matt
Ellis Lake Mama Bass

I’ve been chasing warm-water species with a main focus on carp of course. I’ve been fishing locally at Horseshoe Lake in Chico, Ellis Lake in Marysville, and Paradise Lake in Paradise. Here are some of my catches and reports.

Horseshoe Lake
Its been pretty windy here in Chico and that usually can turn off the carp feeding in the afternoon. I manage to find a plethora of carp feeding on the edges of the lake but they were super wary and wouldn’t take. I tried for a good three hours and did not get a single take the whole time. Those tricky carp will be caught someday soon. I saw a few anglers catch a few small catfish. Once the weather really warms up they can be found in the shallows taking woolly buggers that represent the carp fry but the weather has been fluctuating a bit these past few weeks. Saw a bullfrog just hanging out in the weeds and got him to bite a fly.

Mister Bullfrog

Ellis Lake
This past weekend was really windy and the bite was a bit slow. Nick and I caught a ton of bluegills and lost a lot of freshly tied flies. I caught a nice mama bass my second cast on a clouser minnow and hooked another bass the following day in the evening. Once the wind dies down and the summer weather starts to kick in the warm-water fishing should start getting a lot better. Again the weather fluctuating has made fishing a bit unproductive.

Giant Green Sunfish
Night time Ellis Lake Bass

Paradise Lake
The water level has risen quite a bit and the shallows are green with plant growth and algae but I still had a hard time catching fish. I hooked a daddy bass guarding his bed on accident after trying to cast into the sunken trees. There were quite a few people fishing the parking area for the trout planted a few weeks ago, there were some successful fishers with a few trout on a stringer and a lot of others that got skunked.

Paradise Lake Bass

May is here and I have heard the first report on shad being seen and caught
around Chico. I’ll be getting out there and seeing if I can catch my
first on some of the flies that I tied. Time will only increase my
chances of hooking up my first shad.

Ellis Lake, Yuba River

Beautiful Spring

by Matt
First Crappie of 2014

Spring is in full fling as my allergies have been killing me this last week. Regardless, I am still out doing what I love to do; fly fishing. Its been really windy and warm which basically means I feel miserable which therefore means that I am not really enjoying being out as much as I would like to. I’m still chasing carp at Horseshoe Lake and managed to hook a few but no landing as of recently. I’m currently on sort of a mini vacation at home and fished Ellis Lake and the Yuba river.

Ellis Lake
The weather today was pretty warm and windy. I was hoping to find some carp like I did last week but were no signs of carp anywhere. Nick and I fished around twice, once in the morning and later in the afternoon with no luck on anything big. The bluegills were taking every fly we tossed in front of them though. The only fish worth bragging about were the two crappies that I hooked. For some reason the bass are not very active still. I’m guessing their in early lockjawed postspawn. I’m going back tomorrow to see if I can get into some bigger fish.

Orange tips and tiger stripes
2nd Crappie

Yuba River
The water is low around 761 CFS. Nick and I fished a honey hole and I manage to hook into a nice rainbow. Although Nick didn’t land anything, he learned how to truly fly fish which was pretty cool to watch. He did get some takes but no hook ups. I probably won’t spend too much time on Yuba due to the low flows and spooky fish.

Yuba River Trout

More updates on my mini vacation coming up soon…


2nd day min-vacation
Nick and I hit up the Yuba River again and there were a few guide boats out. I managed into hook two small trout before we left. The river and weather was beautiful but the fish just weren’t hitting as well as I had hoped.

After a small break I decided to go fish Ellis Lake before heading back to Chico. I was there for several hours and managed to be there during the bread hatch. The carp were feeding on the bread that people had thrown in hours back. I managed to hook two but the first one snapped off and the other one spit the hook. These carp learn fast and refused my fly several times.
Needless to say I was disappointed but that’s fly fishing for you. I’m hoping to get back out there soon and land another Ellis Lake monster carp.

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Keep Calm and Fly Fish™