Butte Creek, Feather River, Yuba River

Winter Is Coming

Its starting to get cold and the fishing is in a weird transitional late fall early winter limbo. I’ve been finding that sometimes the fishing is good and other times its really poor. I’ve spent some time on the Feather, Yuba, and Butte creek chasing trout and steelhead. Finding and hooking into a fish isn’t too hard, its the playing and landing that I’ve had the worst luck with.

Yuba River Bow

Butte Creek
I fished Butte Creek after the latest rain storm and the flows were low around 127 CFS that day. The water was a bit off color and there were little signs of salmon around. I must have seen three salmon in a two mile stretch. I hooked and quick-released an 18”+ steelhead on a soft hackle which made it a pretty worth day. Beautiful fish, I wish I could have netted it and taken a picture. Note to self take your time when fighting a steelhead on a 3wt rod. I went 1/5 the whole day which is great considering I didn’t think I’d hook anything. Maybe with some more rain it’ll put more steelhead in the system. Here is to more rain.

Little Resident Butte Trout



Feather River
The Feather has been hit and miss. There are always steelhead around but its still pretty crowded. The fish are still taking eggs but its pretty much a salmon graveyard out there now. The fish are scattered throughout the low flow and with some rain, there should be a push of hatchery fish coming up the river. I want the high flow to start fishing well because I’m getting pretty fed up fishing the same runs and riffles again and again.

Yuba River
I wish I could lie and say that the fishing was good on the Yuba. For the last two days I’ve fished it I’ve only caught one fish. The first day it was sight casting to suckers and the following morning it was sight casting to a nice trout. I didn’t see a single person hook up the whole time I was there. I met up with some other anglers next to my car and they said they hooked three. So I don’t know.

Unsuspecting sucker

I’ll probably keep trying my luck on these rivers until I plan a trip to the Trinity or the American for some big ol winter steelhead.

Big Chico Creek

Hiking Into The Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve

Big Chico Creek in Fall Colors

Fishing and exploring local waters is always fun but sometimes the effort just isn’t worth the fish. I’m a strong advocate of a do-it-yourself angler, going out and exploring creeks, rivers, and streams not knowing what to expect and fishing to my best abilities. Today I found that the Ecological Reserve section of Big Chico Creek isn’t the best place to go to if you need to wet your line.

Big Chico Creek
The section from Bear Hole up to the Upper Boundary of the Ecological Reserve opened the first November. I’ve never seen this section of the creek before so I decided to go down the Ten Mile House/Green Gate hike to go check it out.

Ten Mile House Trail

The hike down took me about 30-40 minutes until I was next to the creek. I was hoping that I had passed the basalt holes similar to Bear Hole but they were scattered throughout the section I fished. These basalt holes are pretty good spots for trout to hold but they are a pain to get past and a pain to fish. From the entrance of the BCCER I probably waded and hiked a mile or two upstream.

Big Chico Creek Trout

Overall, today I believe I hiked over 3 miles there and back, not counting the boulder hopping, the slipping, and the frustration. I ended the day with only two fish. There were tons of little minnows, possibly roaches and/or pike minnows, but no trout to be found in the typical trouty holds. The hike down was easy but the hike back up was a killer, especially in waders.

I would not recommend fishing this section to anyone. It’s a lot of hard work and the pay out just isn’t high enough. I believe the better section to fish for trout is past the BCCER higher up in elevation upstream from Higgin’s Hole. I’ve read about browns being the dominant fish up there and I’m just itching to catch my second brown trout. I’ll have to try it someday and see whats up there.

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