Dry Creek is an anadromous creek that is a tributary of Steelhead Creek which itself is a tributary of the Sacramento River. Its headwaters consist of many small creeks that converge into one as it runs through the cities of Roseville and Rio Linda. The creek is geologically interesting as it is made up of mostly diorite (a peppery colored rock) created from the magma of a Mesozoic era volcano along with other finer materials such as sand and mud. Due to the creek’s anadromous nature it is only opened east of Atkinson Street bridge in Roseville from the fourth Saturday in May to October 15th to the protect the salmon spawn. There doesn’t appear to be any special regulations west of Atikinson Street bridge therefore it can be fished year-round with general trout restrictions.
From my experience small streams tend to be either a hit or a miss. I can always find fish in a creek but finding them consistently can be a challenge. My baseline for judging a small warmwater creek is Big Chico Creek which in my opinion is the one of best smallmouth bass stream fisheries in the state. I did a bit of research on Dry Creek and saw that it primarily contains spotted bass, sunfish, and pike minnow. There wasn’t a lot of information other than a few videos of people fishing the creek and people asking how it fishes. Dry Creek is relatively close to home so I thought it would be an interesting place to explore.
I first laid eyes on Dry Creek from the Dry Creek trail in Rio Linda. I was surprised to find the creek bed was made up of what mostly looked like light brown sediment. This was new to me as I was hoping for a more freestone creek. The water was clear and clean which was a good surprise. I knew that with a such a unique bottom the fishing was going to be challenging. I waded around and kept an eye out for fish but didn’t find much. Discouraged, I thought that maybe higher upstream the creek bed would be different so I drove east towards Roseville to Dry Creek Community Park.
The creek bed at Dry Creek Community Park looked no different than it did at Dry Creek trail. The only major difference was that there was more tree cover. I sucked it up and made my way downstream below the bridge to see if I could hook any fish. I was using 3WT rigged with a small size 8 woolly bugger. I caught mostly spotted bass in addition to a single sunfish. I observed what looked like pike minnow or hardhead but didn’t manage to hook any. I found that the fish in Dry Creek don’t like holding in current as the majority of the fish I found were mostly in froggy water that was about 3ft deep. Unfortunately, these goldilocks zones were relatively far apart from each other so there was a lot of water that didn’t hold any fish.
I give Dry Creek a 4/10 as far as fishing goes. Although the fishing wasn’t great, Dry Creek would be a fantastic place for a family creek outing. The creek is clean, quiet, shallow, and despite being in a highly populated area it wasn’t very busy and I didn’t see any homeless encampments in the areas that I fished. Whether you want to wet your line or your feet Dry Creek is definitely a good place to check out.
