USA Troutfishing

USA Troutfishing

My wife and I took six months off in 2003 to travel around USA and Canada. We rented a 19 ft campervan in Los Angeles and 18,500 miles later, deposited it in New Jersey. My yet-to-be-written book on this adventure has the working title:
Nineteen feet was not enough!

It was rather cramped inside what with all my fishing gear and cartons of books to sell but once we got ourselves organised, it was more than adequate.






Typical North American campsite - although the natives were not particularly friendly, preferring to sit inside their RV and watch telly!








So what was the fishing like? Plenty of NZ anglers have heard that the average size of USA trout is around 9 inches.






And in many streams, that is indeed the case. But there are innumerable rivers and streams where there are a lot bigger trout. I know because I caught a few of them and you might be interested to know where.

 

 

California

The first river I fished in USA was the Sacramento River.
The Upper Sacramento flows for over 30 miles between Lake Siskiyou and Shasta Lake and is a wade-fishing paradise with a great mix of deep pools, riffles, and pocket water. Open to fly fishing year-round, this river is known for its large wild rainbows, beautiful scenery, and prolific hatches. Concurrent hatches of mayflies, stoneflies, midges, and caddisflies happen almost everyday throughout the spring, summer, and fall.
I had given a presentation to a fishing club in Davis, California and my host, Ron Rabun, kindly invited us to spend the weekend with him at his ''bach'' in Dunsmuir. It turned out that his fishing cottage was a lot flasher than our home back in NZ and what's more, it has the Sacramento River flowing past his back lawn. He could actually stand in his back yard and fish for trout!
Ron explained that the fishing was not as good as it was a few years ago when there were 9000 trout per mile in the river. There had been a terrible disaster when a tanker wagon came off the rails and fell into the river. The tanker contained some pretty nasty chemical which had wiped out the trout population. The trout had since recovered but not to the levels that they were before - there were only 6000 trout per mile now!
And we managed to catch quite a few of them, especially during the evening rise. The trout were not large but went up to 3lb so were quite respectable.






McCloud River below dam









The next day we travelled to the lower slopes of Mt Shasta - at 14,000 odd feet, it is the third highest mountain in USA. Reminds one of Mt Taranaki to look at.



The McCloud River rises on Mt Shasta being fed by the perpetual snow cover. This produces prime troutfishing water.









Ron introduced me to a new technique he uses to fish fast, deep water. It is similar to the 'No Indicator' or 'Czech/Polish' technique except that Ron uses three nymphs instead of lead shot to get the flies down quickly.





















The technique calls for the rig to be lobbed upstream just using the weight of the flies to get the line upstream. Then the rod arm is extended out horizontally and leads the flies downstream.


Any perceptible change in speed of the movement of the leader/line downstream should see a downstream strike. Many times this will in vain as the rig has just encountered a rock. But it is absolutely vital to strike at everything as sometimes it will be a fish that has intercepted the flies.





The downstream strike takes some practice especially as I had never used such a technique. It only took 30 minutes to master and proved very effective. It also proved a welcome addition to my striking techniques, especially when you were fishing a long cast where the flies were maybe 20 yds away from the rod. Like when you fish the far side of a river. I just wish I had known of this downstream strike when we fished the old Cattle Rustlers Pool on the Tongariro many moons ago. It would have resulted in a lot less lost fish.
After an hour, I had the technique mastered well enough to start catching fish.



They were not large, being mostly in the 1-2 lb bracket but they gave a good account of themselves in the fast water.




After lunch we moved up to the upper McCloud above the dam. Here, the river was much smaller, just a stream really. We changed to a dry fly rig and fished fast water dries through the turbulent small pools. The first take saw me flick the rod tip up - and catapult a six inch trout into the undergrowth behind me!
'A little less on the strike', suggested Ron, trying to keep a straight face. I was just glad there was no one else present to witness my embarrassment.
The next take came soon enough and I managed to keep the fish in the water, but only just. A few more takes and I had worked out it was sufficient just to raise the rod tip a few inches to set the hook. We took twenty or more trout in a couple of hours. The biggest would have only been 12 inches but they were beautiful trout.




The Redband rainbow trout look very similar to our rainbows - not surprising when shipments of ova from the McCloud River were sent to New Zealand more than 100 years ago.







The McCloud redband ancestors survived the Ice Age in the upper McCloud drainage east of Mt. Shasta, an area that was spared from glaciers. The redbands were isolated by barrier falls from coastal rainbow trout and bull trout downstream.





Trinity River
Northern California










Located about an hour west of Redding, the Trinity River is one of California's most scenic and rewarding fly fishing rivers. Home to resident Brown and Rainbow Trout, the Trinity River is perhaps best known for its phenomenal returns of steelhead trout. These fish begin their arrival in late September, and continue to provide outstanding fishing through to March. Unfortunately, I fished the river in June so only encountered juvenile steelhead around the half pound mark. There were a huge number of rafters and kayakers and they did not show the same courtesy as you would receive from such river sharers in NZ so it was not long before I packed up and left them to it.





Trinity River steelhead - a bit bigger than the ones I caught!








That was the end of the California fishing as we entered one of my favourite States in USA.