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I found myself on the Lower Sac four out of the last five days with the fifth day taking place on the Feather.
The Lower Sac is still fishing well fish with most days seeing about 25-30 rainbows being boated. I have been concentrating my efforts between Bonnyview and Barge Hole. It wont be long now until the lower river starts to fish really well. Typically as the first signs of summer start to show up it is then time to start fishing from the Balls Ferry bridge down to Bend Bridge. The Sac has been getting some decent PMD hatches happening in the middle of the day and there are a handful of golden stones flying around in some of the riffles. When you are out there you will see the occasional caddis buzzing around but still not a lot of them. It wont be long until the summer caddis hatches start. The hot ticket in the upper river has been rubberlegs, pmd nymphs, prince nymphs, and pheasant tails. One great thing about the Sac is how consistent the bugs are. Not to often is there a hot new pattern that just smacks them. Lately it seems the feeding patterns have been extremely sporadic. You will catch a handful of fish on one fly at a specific time and then the fish stop eating it. Once you start messing around with your flies and changing bugs out then you find one that they start eating again. I guess that is what you have to love about fly fishing. It is a never ending puzzle where you have to find the right piece that fits.
Got the opportunity to fish the Feather on Sunday and the fishing was pretty good. We focused all of our efforts in the Low Flow section from the Hatchery down to the afterbay. In about 5 hours of fishing a couple guys hooked 8 steelhead. What was a nice surprise was that 4 of the fish were smaller adults in the 22-24'' range. These spring fish are a lot of fun to catch. They are super hot and pissed off when you hook them. The key was to throw small mayfly patterns in the morning and then the afternoon switch to caddis stuff. If you can get away with a bigger hook then this will increase your chances at landing these spring steelhead in the faster water. Good luck with that one as it is common to drop a lot of fish this time of year.
One cool story that I had from this weekend is that I got the chance to row two younger kids down the Lower Sac. Sean was 12 and Colby was 13, and neither one of them had ever touched a fly rod. So we got them started in the morning and I taught them the ins and outs of indactor nymph fishing. After a couple of hours they had the process figured out and they started pulling on some fish. By the end of the day the two of them they had hooked over 20 rainbows and the grins on their faces were huge. I love getting the chance to row kids because they have that pure joy when they hook a 14'' rainbow. At times I think that us die hards forget to appreciate every fish we hook. Kids have a way of bringing you back to the true reason of what you are doing this sport for. Every fish should be appreciated because each one has its own beauty and fight.
Fish Hard!
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