Spey rods have taken the steelheading world by storm over the past few years. If you survey all the anglers who make the annual pilgrimage to British Columbia to swing flies for steelhead, the vast majority are packing Spey rods these days. These long two-handed rods are a great tool for making big casts on big rivers. Many anglers who started out swinging steelhead flies with a single-handed rod have switched over to Spey rods to take advantage of the additional range, ease of casting sink tips and heavy flies, and overall casting efficiency that they offer.
To expand the market for two-handed rods, manufacturers have embarked on a quest to make them smaller and lighter. Shorter and lighter rods are less intimidating for casters, and they make small fish feel bigger. Landing a five-pound steelhead on a 7-weight Spey rod is fun, but not much of a contest. A five-pound steelie on a 5-weight Spey rod is more of an even match. Spey rods are now remarkably popular on rivers such as the Trinity, once thought to be too small to fish with a Spey rod.
In the last few years, the trend toward shorter and lighter Spey rods has extended into the trout realm. It is now possible to buy 3-weight and 4-weight Spey rods that are great tools for trout fishing on larger rivers such as the lower Sacramento. Five years ago, the lightest mass-produced Spey rod I could find was a 5-weight, a 12-foot 6-inch model. This rod was great for casting (and remains one of my favorite light steelhead rods), but it made an 18-inch trout feel like a goldfish on the end of the line. There is now an adequate array of two-handed trout rods on the market that are appropriate for trout fishing.
You might ask where switch rods fit into this discussion. Traditionally, single-handed rods topped out around 10 feet in length, Spey rods were at least 12 feet long, and switch rods occupied that space in between. Like Spey rods, switch rods also have grips for both hands. The basic idea of the switch rod is that it is a versatile rod that can be used to Spey cast, overhead cast, cast shooting heads, fish flies on the swing, or fish nymphs under an indicator. Perhaps the switch rod is made to be the Swiss Army knife of your rod quiver.
When it comes to my own personal fishing preferences, my only interest in two-handed rods is for swinging flies. To put it another way, Spey and switch rods are all two-handed rods that I use to swing flies. Is an 11-foot 6-inch 4-weight two-hander a Spey rod or a switch rod? I don’t know. It’s irrelevant. I use the terms “Spey rod” and “two-handed rod” interchangeably, and I mean to include switch rods when I use both of those terms.
When shopping for a trout Spey rod for the lower Sac, I recommend a 4-weight. Four-weight rods are light enough to make a 12-inch trout feel like something you would want to catch, and they have enough backbone to allow for casts in excess of 70 feet. These rods also work well on the lower Feather, Yuba, and American Rivers. The 4-weight Spey rods I own come in lengths from 10 feet 9 inches to 11 feet 9 inches. These rods are amazing fishing machines. When you are in your groove, these rods will easily throw 90 feet of line when you make a nice Double Spey or Snap-T cast.
When it comes to lines, I like to fish a “Scandi”-style line and a 10-foot sinking “poly” leader, which has a polymer coating surrounding an inner core of mono and which comes in variety of sink rates, from floating to fast sinking. The Scandi line is a floating line, typically made as a shooting head that you attach to a shooting line. Scandi lines are meant for fishing on or near the surface and are not designed to cast really heavy tips or really heavy flies. To fish different depths, you attach a poly leader with the appropriate sink rate. Typically, on the lower Sac, I fish a poly leader with a medium to fast sink rate. It’s important to get your fly down at least into the middle of the water column and preferably within a foot of the bottom.
Your rod manufacturer should provide a chart showing grain-weight suggestions for various types of lines for your rod model. Look under the “Scandi” column and start with their recommendation. Once you put everything together, you should have backing, a shooting line, then your Scandi head, then one of your 10-foot poly leaders, then about 5 feet of 3X tippet, and finally your fly. You can attach your tippet to the leader either with a Surgeon’s Knot or with a tippet ring. Take your rod out to the river and try a few casts. If you’re lucky, the line will be perfectly matched to your rod and will cast beautifully. With my shorter 4-weight rod, I had to cut off about four feet of the Scandi head, and then it worked great.
When swinging flies on the lower Sac, target riffles and runs that are two to five feet deep. Look for a relatively uniform current from your bank to the middle of the river. It’s hard to get a good swing if you are casting over a big eddy or multiple currents. Many of the best swing runs on the lower Sac are found on the inside bends of the river. Choppy riffles are good, too. There is a lot of water on the lower Sac that is just a little too slow and/or too shallow to fish with a nymph and an indicator. Much of this slower water is excellent for swinging flies. And if you are fishing a spot that isn’t good for nymph-and-indicator fishing from a drift boat, it’s probably a spot that holds fish that don’t see very many flies.
For your first lower Sac Spey adventure, try to target a spring or summer evening. The last two hours of daylight are the magic time of day when mayflies and caddisflies hatch profusely. Trout that have been tight-lipped all day usually go on the grab at this time of day, especially in the shallow water. Cast across the river and let your fly swing across the current. If it’s swinging really fast, mend upstream to slow the fly’s speed. If it’s swinging too slowly, mend downstream, or even hold your rod tip toward the bank to speed it up. If you see a rising fish, try to swing your fly a foot or two upstream from where the rise occurred.
My favorite fly to swing on the lower Sac is a Beadhead Bird’s Nest in tan or in olive, size 10 to 14. Other good flies include Prince Nymphs, Pheasant Tail Nymphs, and soft-hackle patterns. Sometimes I swing two flies, spaced two feet apart, with the larger fly tied on first. I occasionally trail a fly as small as a size 18 as a dropper. I never go lighter than 4X tippets when swinging flies on the lower Sac. You may find that you get a lot of grabs, but can’t keep a fish on the line very long. Try holding your rod up at a 30-to-45-degree angle above horizontal while swinging your fly, and most importantly, don’t react at all when you feel the grab. Let the fish pull on the tip of the rod for at least three seconds before you start playing the fish. This technique results in a lot more fish in the net.
Another Spey technique that is a lot of fun is swinging streamers. I prefer a Zonker or other flashy minnow imitation. Tie it to 2X tippet and a fast-sinking poly leader. You can fish the streamer on a traditional swing and follow that with a quick retrieve. Another way to go is to hold the rod tip up during the swing and pull about a foot of line back and forth, jigging the fly as it swings. Fish of all sizes can be caught this way, and the grab is incredible.
Where to Go
Wading access to the river has been covered extensively in recent articles in this magazine by Bob Madgic. (See “Wading the Lower Sacramento River,” California Fly Fisher, November/December 2013 and “The Lower Sacramento: Anderson to Red Bluff,” California Fly Fisher, March/April 2014.) You can also use a boat or other watercraft to access good wading areas. You can catch trout on a Spey rod on any part of the lower Sac, from Redding to Red Bluff. The upper part of the lower river boasts bigger fish. The average rainbow in downtown Redding is about 14 inches, while closer to Red Bluff it’s more like 11 inches. Big trout can be caught on any part of the river, but there are just more of them upstream for some reason.
From a Spey angler’s point of view, though, there are several drawbacks to fishing on the upper part of the lower river, in and around Redding. The first is moss. The rocks on the bottom of the river are very mossy on the upper end and much cleaner once you get down below Anderson. If you are placing your fly down near the bottom, you will hook a lot of moss if you fish up in Redding. You may find that you have to clean your fly regularly and/ or switch to a slower-sinking poly leader to avoid hooking the bottom. The wading is also more difficult on the upper end of the lower part of the river. The river bottom has more bedrock and larger cobbles, whereas much of the lower section has broad, gently sloping gravel bars and small cobbles.
Another advantage of fishing on the lower section of the lower Sac is that is has fewer crowds. There are just way more anglers and boats above Anderson than below it. The farther down you go, the more solitude you will find. You will also find more hookups, for two reasons. The fish downstream, especially the ones in the relatively shallow water that you’ll be targeting, get a lot less pressure from anglers. Also, the bigger fish in Redding don’t chase flies as much, so they’re less likely to eat a fly on the swing. These big, lazy fish would rather wait for a dead-drifted nymph to come really close than go off and chase a fly swinging across the current. The main exception is when there is a really big hatch going on. That’s when you want to be up in the Redding area, so you can catch an 18-plus-inch rainbow on the swing.
The Best Times
Any time of year can be a good time for a lower Sac Spey trip. The best times of year, though, are the spring and summer. Fish get active in March as the water warms and the mayfly and caddisfly hatches ramp up. Fishing is good during the early summer and gets even better with the hot weather in July, August, and September. The water on the lower Sac is always cold all the way down to Red Bluff. Wet wading is the rule during the summer months. Swinging flies at midday in the heat of the summer can be remarkably productive. Swinging success slows down in October and November, when the trout focus on eating salmon eggs.
Steelhead on the Lower Sac
Every year, several thousand steelhead return to the Coleman National Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek, a tributary of the lower Sac. The river also has some wild steelhead that spawn in the main stem of the river and in various smaller tributaries. These steelhead are present in the lower parts of the river from September through April and are a nice surprise when you’re swinging flies for trout. In many ways, these are the easiest fish to fool in the river system. Steelhead are big, dumb rainbows. Think about it. They’ve been out in the ocean for the last year or more, not subject to the intense fishing pressure that the resident trout experience. If you’re fishing a run that has 10 trout and a single steelhead in it, the steelhead is probably the dumbest fish in that run. On the lower Sac, it’s just a numbers game. There are only a couple thousand migratory steelhead, and there are countless thousands of resident trout. If you’re persistent, you will be rewarded. I’ve found that these steelhead like to eat Bird’s Nests and other trout flies really well. They are a lot of fun to land on a 4-weight Spey rod.
It’s a Different River
There is one thing I have always said about the lower Sac: it is a different river when you get out of the boat. When you spend a day wading and Spey casting on the lower Sac, you will notice things you have never seen before. You will become aware of rising fish, foam lines, drop-offs, hatches, and seams. Instead of the river merely being a backdrop for your indicator, the river reveals itself as a body of different water types just waiting to be fished with different techniques. On foot and armed with your lightweight Spey rod, chances are, you will swing up some great rainbow trout.
