Summer in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California can be hot. I mean really hot — temperatures over a hundred are common. After living in Chico for the last 16 years, I pretty much expect it to be between 95 and 105 degrees every day from June through September, and if you get a true heat wave, temperatures that exceed 115 degrees are possible. The hottest day that I have ever guided, in Redding, was 119 degrees. Years later, I think I am still dehydrated from those extreme fishing conditions.
The large rivers of the Sacramento Valley, the lower Sacramento, lower Yuba, and lower Feather, get very little attention from anglers during the summer due to the extreme heat. Instead, most devote their fishing time to the streams and rivers in the cooler Sierra Nevada. This is also the time of year when many take off to the Rockies for their annual dry-fly trips to the esteemed waters of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. So one nice thing about fishing the northern Central Valley in the summer is that the crowds go away, and the fishing pressure becomes very light.
Another nice thing is that you can catch a lot of fish in the summer during the cooler parts of the day. If you are willing to be creative with your fishing strategy and when you fish, you can have a great experience fly fishing the large valley rivers with little to no competition. And there are some really cool and unique fishing situations that occur only during the hottest part of the year. Don’t let the heat scare you off. If you can think outside of the box, you will be rewarded.
The Lower Sacramento River
The summer months are when the lower Sacramento receives the least amount of fishing pressure. That’s because the heat can be downright unbearable at times, and overall, the fishing is really just average. However, you can have great days on the lower Sac if you fish the two primetime bite windows, midmorning and late evening. Most guides during the summer split their days, first targeting the morning hours from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., when the Pale Morning Duns are hatching, then getting off the water to avoid the afternoon’s extreme heat and poor fishing conditions. Around 6:00 p.m., they then go back out to target the cooler hours and the evening caddis hatch.
Generally speaking, PMD hatches on the lower Sacramento are typically fished with nymphs, especially in the summer. Use an indicator rig with eight to nine feet of leader between the indicator and your weight. The best patterns are Mercer’s Poxyback PMD and Ouellette’s Peaches and Cream nymph.
The summer evening caddis hatch on the lower Sac can be remarkable. Fish the faster riffles, where caddis mostly live, and be ready for aggressive strikes. Indicator nymphing will always be the best way to fish the lower Sac, but the summer caddis hatch presents the only consistent dry-fly activity all year long. To fish it, though, you need to stay out until the very end of daylight. Find a shallow flat at the end of the day, and the last 45 minutes should reward you with large rainbows rising to caddis. It is a special time as you watch the sunset glisten off the water and rainbows crash on hatching bugs.
The Lower Yuba River
You don’t have to go to the Rockies to get consistent dry-fly hopper fishing. The lower Yuba River has great hopper fishing during the summertime, with many days producing twenty-plus fish. As the day warms, grasshoppers become active, so target the hours from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., then quit before the extreme afternoon heat sets in. Try fishing tan or pink hopper imitations that ride really low in the water, size 10 to 12 (I like the Morrish Hopper). Yuba rainbows prefer dry flies that sit low in the water, so choose patterns with slimmer profiles and less foam. These flies may be harder to see, but the fish will eat them more often. Any shallow bank with bushes nearby is a prime location to find wild Yuba rainbows waiting for grasshoppers to fall in, so when fishing hopper imitations on the lower Yuba, target the shallow current a foot or two deep. Just because it is shallow doesn’t mean there aren’t fish there to catch.
Once the serious heat starts to set in around three o’clock, head up to Nevada City for a beer and an early dinner. Then come back to the river around 8:00 p.m. for some incredible evening dry-fly fishing to great hatches of light-pink Pale Evening Duns and tan caddisflies. Because Yuba rainbows like low-floating flies, fishing emergers will increase your success rate. For the PEDs, try a pink Sparkle Dun or Hackle Stacker. For the caddis, you can never go wrong with a tan X-Caddis.
Find a slow, shallow flat or tailout to fish during this last hour of daylight. Be patient and wait for the bugs to start hatching . Don’t go out there and lash the river into a froth when nothing is happening — it will put the fish down. Once the bugs start hatching and fish start rising consistently, target a specific fish with a downstream approach. Don’t cast to different fish on different casts, because your fly line will drift over other feeding fish and put them down. Be methodical and target specific fish, one at a time.
The Lower Feather River
One of the fishing opportunities the valley offers during the summer is catching steelhead on dry flies. Steelhead will rise to dry flies if there are enough bugs hatching, and the summer caddis hatches on the lower Feather River can be very large. From 9:00 a.m. until noon, caddis hatch almost every day. Target shallow riff les with one to three feet of water. Fishing two dry flies in tandem, with a tan Elk Hair Caddis in front and a tan X-Caddis behind, works great. Look for actively rising fish. If you don’t see caddis hatching or fish rising, don’t waste time blind casting. Move on to the next spot and see if there are fish feeding there.
The best dry-fly steelhead fishing on the lower Feather River is in the Low Flow Section near Oroville, which starts at the hatchery and runs to the afterbay outlet. Targeting the upper Low Flow Section upriver of the Highway 70 bridge offers the best opportunities for catching steelhead on dries. Bedrock Park is a great spot and a place where steelhead rise often.
When fishing for steelhead with dry flies, make sure to use a heavy tippet, because you never know when you might hook a fish of seven or eight pounds. Fishing a 3X tippet with dries is very common on the lower Feather. However, most of the steelhead are juvenile half-pounders in the 16-to-18-inch range, although it is not uncommon to hook 20-inchers and 22-inchers. Last year, I was on the Feather targeting a group of rising half-pounders when a large nose came up to suck my fly in. An eight-pound steelhead ate my X-Caddis, and we were off to the races. Most people have never caught a steelhead on a dry fly. If you are one of them, you should check out summer fishing on the Feather River. Trust me — catching steelhead on dry flies is one of the more exciting fishing opportunities that summer offers.
Summer Stripers
Probably the best all-around summer fishing in the Sacramento Valley is for stripers in the Sacramento, Feather, and American Rivers. Prime-time striper fishing in the valley rivers runs from late June through September. As the water temperatures increase, the large resident stripers become more active, and after the shad leave the rivers in June, the large f ish become hungry and start feeding heavily, moving into the shallows to hunt pikeminnows. This is when they become targets for fly fishers. They feed in and around structure, so hit zones with 5 to 12 feet of water with fallen trees, weed beds, and underwater clay edges. Stripers use these structures to hide as they hunt their prey.
Eight-weight and 9-weight rods and shooting heads are the way to go, fishing 1/0 and 2/0 Clousers in chartreuse, olive, black, gray, or white. And don’t forget to use heavy leaders when targeting stripers, because you never know when you are going to hook a forty-plus-pound fish. Stripers are not leader shy and I consistently use 20-pound-test leaders when fishing for them.
When you hook a striper, don’t be afraid to be aggressive. Strip aggressively and make that fish earn every inch of its run. Because you are using a heavy leader, you can put maximum pressure on the fish. This is different than your normal trout and steelhead fishing, when you want to use the rod to minimize pressure on the tippet. When fighting a striper, you are trying to maximize pressure on the fish. To do that, bend the rod low into the butt section, lowering the rod and pulling at less of an angle to the water. The longer the fish is down at the bottom of the river, the greater the chance it will find a snag and wrap your line around it.
Fight stripers aggressively and use the bottom part of the fly rod to put maximum pressure on the fish.
Hot Times Fishing the Valley
In the summer, the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley of Northern California offers all kinds of awesome fly-fishing opportunities. There’s no need to go to the Sierra or the Rockies to find great fishing on uncrowded rivers. You can have hot times on the water fishing during the cooler parts of the day. Be creative, think outside of the box, and you can experience some of the best fly-fishing opportunities of the year.
