Some of the best advice I ever received when I was a young guide was “Never leave fish to find fish.” That’s pretty simple and sage advice — it even applies to life in general, I think: be happy where you are and appreciate the blessings you have. That said, for most fly fishers, it is some of the hardest advice to follow. I know I am always wanting to go around the next bend on a river or the next mile down the road, and I will even change an effective fly to see if I can catch just a few more fish or maybe a bigger fish. I think that like most things in life, balance is the key — balancing exploration with being content where you are.
All that said, I rarely follow that principle in my own life — or in fishing, for that matter. If all fly anglers remained content with what they were doing, we would still be fishing only dry flies for trout, upstream on floating lines. The summer months are not the busiest of times for a guide who lives in California’s Central Valley. Many guides relocate to Alaska, put ridiculous numbers of miles on their trucks driving to the mountains for trout, or scratch out a few days with people who can take the daytime highs of 100 degrees floating the tailwaters. Even if a guide stays home, puts the miles on the truck to get up into the mountains, and manages to book a few blistering floats, by early July, most trout f isheries have turned into morning-and-evening gigs, and full-day trips are not really worth anyone’s time.
About ten years ago, when the prospect of raising a family and paying a mortgage became a reality, and not wanting to go to Alaska or be gone 14 hours a day, spending 6 of them in the car, I decided to ask my father for a $10,000 loan to buy a motorboat. The plan was to guide in a fishery that I had never fished, had no idea if it would be a viable guiding venue, and had heard only sparse rumors about fly fishers catching fish there. But if it panned, out this fishery was only 15 miles from my house and would fish great all summer long.
Hindsight mixed with age leads me to believe that maybe this was pushing the limits of the whole exploration thing, and I should have been happy with what I was doing during the summer months . . . but hey, it all worked out, and now I am writing an article about it.
My crazy idea was that I could guide all summer on the lower Sacramento River outside of Chico, California, for bass, striped bass, and carp, along with some spring guiding for shad. I knew that people have soaked bait for stripers there, and I had heard rumors of guys fly fishing for stripers during the summer, but most of the fishing that was being done at the time was for the migratory run of stripers that swims up from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta in March and April and that on a good year only makes it up to around Butte City. I did my homework though. I drove the river from Los Molinos on down to Butte City on back roads and farm roads and spent hours on Google Earth comparing what I saw and what I thought was there.
What I found was that the geography of the lower Sacramento River changes greatly as it runs south from the town of Red Bluff. The river no longer flows through its volcanic canyon, where centuries of volcanic rock from Mount Lassen and Mount Shasta have created armored banks, channelizing the river and creating some of the best trout habitat in the West. Below Red Bluff, the river drops onto the valley floor, where the banks are composed of clay and soil. This has allowed the river to open up, cut new channels, and move relatively freely down and across the valley between orchards and wildlife preserves from Red Bluff to Butte City, where the river becomes channelized again by levies and water diversions. I discovered that the section of the lower Sacramento from Red Bluff down to Butte City is one of the most diverse fisheries in California. It is home to largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, salmon, trout, runs of American shad, carp, various panfish species, migratory striped bass, and the top game f ish: resident striped bass.
A Changing Environment
Many anglers are familiar with the migratory striped bass that run up the lower Sacramento, Feather River, American River, and even the lower Yuba River each spring, but over the years, striped bass have established a resident population in the Sacramento River from Red Bluff down, and now, with the removal of the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, they are even making their way upriver.
The conditions over the last few years have been perfect for the proliferation of a resident striped bass population in the lower Sacramento, according to California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Henry Lomeli. In general, the Delta and San Francisco Bay have been becoming less habitable, with the influx of salt water and the decline of the most prevalent baitfish in the Delta, the Delta smelt. At the same time, the river upstream has become a much more habitable place. The lack of major floods or high-water events for the better part of 10 years on the lower Sacramento has helped create the ideal habitat for resident stripers.
High-water events during the fall and winter have been thought to push many of the yearling stripers downriver to the Delta and the bay, along with any fish that may have been inclined to stay after a summer spent upriver. Furthermore, high-water events clean out the river, removing weed growth, snags, and bank habitat where baitfish and their prey — bugs, and smaller fish — thrive. Over the last 10 years and most recently over the last 3 to 4 years, however, weed growth on the lower Sacramento from Redding down to Butte City has exploded. With lower water allowing more photosynthesis and with the lack of high-water events to clear out weeds, every year for several years, aquatic weeds have grown without check. In the upper river, from Jellys Ferry on up, the abundant weed growth has meant the proliferation of hatches such as Pale Morning Duns and Baetis, because these weeds provide ideal habitat for mayflies. In the lower river, from Red
Bluff down to Butte City, huge weed beds choke coves, sloughs, and shallow areas along the bank, where they provide ideal bug habitat and baitfish habitat for species such as bluegills and pikeminnows, which in turn provide feed for resident stripers.
I have no scientific evidence to support my claims, outside of the opinions of local fisheries biologists and my own observations over the years of guiding and fishing for stripers on the river. I am confident, though, that what is happening is that the Delta has been becoming less habitable and the river environments have been becoming more habitable, and stripers are taking advantage of this by not leaving the river and by establishing resident multigenerational resident populations there.
The Fishery’s Character
With so much concern over the last decade about declining fish populations, drought, and doom for fish in Northern California, it is fun to guide on a fishery that has been improving and developing. There are windows of time that are better than others, but the fish are always there, and that creates the opportunity to hook into a striper 12 months of the year. As with any fishery, of course, there are prime times. The peak of the striper season on the lower Sacramento from Red Bluff down to Butte City is from April through September, with a bit of a lull when the American shad migrate through to spawn, because the shad provide a huge food source for the resident stripers. The months of February through April also offer good angling. Fishing is done almost exclusively from a motorboat, and with the low flows of the drought, a boat with a jet drive is highly recommended. There can be wade fishing opportunities, but an angler will need a boat to access these spots. The best time of day usually falls between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. — banker’s hours.
There can be some decent top-water fishing during the early morning and evening hours, but most fish are caught during midday.
Stripers come in all sizes on the lower Sacramento, from fish we measure in single-digit inches to fish that push the imagination of how big a striper can get. On any given day, anglers will see fish that range from a few inches to over 30 pounds. As with any healthy fish population, there are more midsize fish than big fish. Most fish we hook on any given day are between 18 inches to 10 pounds, but on most days, anglers will see or have a shot at what many consider a trophy striper. It is not uncommon to see fish over 30 pounds on a daily basis. That is not to say that an angler will hook these fish every day, but we do have them follow the fly, or have a shot at casting to one, or spook them off a flat or weed bed, and all that most anglers need to know to keep them coming back is that they have a chance for a trophy.
Find the Forage Fish
The key to striper fishing on the lower Sacramento River between Red Bluff and Butte City is finding where stripers will go to look for food. The conventional-tackle method of striper fishing is to soak bait in the deeper holes and runs and hope that a striper searches it out based on the smell. While this can be an effective method, I have found that stripers hunkered down in deeper water are usually not actively feeding, because their traditional prey in the river does not live in deeper holes and runs. Fishing for actively feeding stripers, instead of fish sulking in deep holes, is a much higher-percentage game with a fly.
To find areas where stripers will go to feed, the classic advice — find the bait, and you’ll find the fish — applies. Finding areas that hold large populations of pikeminnows and bluegills is the key to finding the best striper water. I spend a lot of hours cruising coves, banks, and backwaters, looking for and fishing for pikeminnows and bluegills, because not all weed beds and coves hold good populations of these striper forage fish. While these spots may not always hold stripers, stripers will find the food eventually, and this has proven true for me throughout the years.
I search out slack water and coves on the banks of the river that have weed beds or submerged weeds and access to deep water close by. I tend to focus on water from about 3 to 10 feet deep along or around weed beds or submerged weeds. While I find stripers in water so shallow you can see their backs sticking out while they cruise the edges and channels through weed beds, 3 feet seems to be the magic number at which the fish will not spook at the slightest movement, bad cast, or push of the trolling motor.
I don’t spend a lot of time in any one spot. Covering as many spots as possible is the key to having a good day, because you can never predict when fish will move into any given area to feed. One to two passes without a follow or fish will usually be enough to get me to move. I rarely change flies in the hope of enticing a fish to eat, because if the fish are there, they are there to eat, and they will usually jump on or at least follow a fly.
Recommended Tackle
The most common outfit for striper fishing on the lower Sacramento is an 8-weight to 10-weight rod with a fast-sinking shooting head. That said, I fish a wide variety of shooting heads: Type 7 and Type 3 sink-rate heads, an intermediate head, and a floating head. What I choose is based on the water depth and the retrieve rate of the fly. There are a lot of situations where the water depth may dictate a certain sink rate, but the rate of the retrieve may dictate a slower sink rate to slow the fly down and keep it in the strike zone when a heavier head on a slow retrieve would settle on the bottom or hang up. Experimentation with retrieves and presentations is important, because you need to find a retrieve that entices fish and the depth at which they want the fly while also getting the fly to the big fish while keeping the smaller fish away from it.
Fly patterns can be as simple or complex as you like. Although the most prevalent food sources for stripers are pike minnows and bluegills, stripers eat all types of baitfish in the river, and I have never found a need to “match the hatch.” I find that a chartreuse-over-white Clouser-style minnow is really all you need. Everyone I know, though, has a favorite striper fly and color combination, and I am never afraid to try a new color combination or pattern. The bottom line is that stripers are predators, and predators respond to prey.
I do dish flies of different densities and sizes, because varying fly density and size in essence varies the presentation. They affect how much water the fly moves and the pressure waves it gives off as it pushes through the water, and a striper first senses a fly via the pressure or water disturbance it picks up with its lateral lines.
The lower Sacramento is widely known as a world-class trout fishery, but it is also a prime example of what can be discovered when fly anglers think outside the box and explore off the beaten path. If we never leave fish to find fish, we are destined to repeat what we have always done, and if we never leave what is comfortable, we will never discover what is new and exciting. The striper fishery on the lower Sacramento River certainly is all that — and more.
