The Northern California Fly Fishing Board

Fished the middle fork below beardsley last Friday. woke up to non stop rain. finally decided to get out of bed (an air mattress in the back of my new outback. very comfortable camping) and do some fishing. The river was higher than i'm use to. I assume the run off hasn't been cut down to normal summer flows yet. This definitely prevented us from fishing certain holes that I've had luck w/ in the past.

Either way, with a little hiking we were able to get into some great fish. Mostly all on dry flies matter of fact. There was plenty of may flies coming off the water all day and you could see the fish were eatin em. I couldn't match the hatch perfectly, but anything with a red body seemed to work. For me there were plenty of missed takes and about 6 or 7 fish to hand. Most of them in the 10 to 12 range. My brother had similar luck. I came out on top with the biggest fish of the day and possibly my biggest rainbow i've ever landed, measuring in a little over 16 inches. (pictured below)

On saturday we we had to attend a wedding in twainhart, but Sunday we were back on the river. This time we hit the south fork near frasier flat campground. It was crowded with people plunking lures in every hole. The fishing was not nearly as good, but we both hooked into a few fish. My brother swears he had a lunker on when i wasn't around... The south fork in this area is different from the middle fork. It's way less water. More shallow riffles and smaller rocks. The middle fork has deep giant pools, huge boulders, and waaaay fewer anglers.

The wedding hangover did not seem to help my fishing on Sunday. I kinda half assed everything. Still nice to be out on the water though.

Sammy,

Nice report. Red bodies, eh?? Hmmmm.

Was the water running over the dam and through the spillway or just the usual summer outlet?

Sammy wrote:
The middle fork has deep giant pools, huge boulders, and waaaay fewer anglers.
and there are some real lunkers hiding out in those deep pools. Catching them is the hard part!

Thanks for the report.

Buzz

Ed i didn't actually see the dam. We were probably 3 miles from it. But i think the water level was about 3 feet higher than normal summer levels based on some of my rocks being submerged.

Ed,

Last numbers I saw showed that Beardsley & the Beardsley Afterbay were both spilling several hundred CFS. That was Sunday morning around 00:30.

Dustin

Sammy,

Thanks for the report & pics. Where did you access the Middle Fork from?

Dustin

Some guys from our fly club were up at Beardsley over the weekend. The lake and afterbay are both full to the top and spilling.
The river IS fishable, but running high. There were several guys that did real well downstream.

Took the frasier flat campground turn off 108. From there it's a series of unmarked turns and dirt roads to get to the middle fork.