Fishing Report

Trinity Journal

February 25, 2009
By E. B. Duggan (530) 629-3554 yen2fish@yahoo.com
 

Trinity Lake is 116 feet below the overflow and 40.5 percent of capacity. Average inflow to the lake is 900 cfs and 45 cfs is being released to the Sacramento River.

Forecasts in the valley are for 54/33 with showers and rain through next week. The river blew out yesterday morning in Willow Creek and last night on the upper river.

The Trinity River hatchery count for the last two weeks has gone up. The Feb. 11 count: Spring Chinook stand at 3,766, fall Chinook, 5,249. Last year fall Chinook counts were 9,015. The coho count for this season is 5,188. Last year's count was 2,923. The steelhead count at TRH went back up again as new fish came into the system this past two weeks. The count was 165, for a total of 2,083 to date. Last year's count was 8,683 at this same time.

This storm has really started the fish to move. It has also made the river very muddy but kept the temperatures low due to the snowmelt. Water flows for the upper section blew out the river last night so it will be a couple of days before you will be able to start fishing from Lewiston down to Douglas City.

NOOA weather report says that we should expect rain and showers until next week. That could make fishing very hard, but the good part is that as soon as the river starts to drop, fishing for those big native spawners should turn hot as the river has been seeing more of them in the last week.

Prior to the rains this past week, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday a couple of my fishing buddies, Ed Trujillo and Mike Miza, were fishing Junction City, Del Loma areas and did pretty good. Tuesday they fished the Del Loma run and boated five adults 5 to 10 pounds. Only one of them was a hatchery hen; all the rest were native fish full of fight.

Last Wednesday they did the Junction City to Pigeon Point run and landed three native adults 8 to 12 pounds. Thursday they fished from Sky Ranch Road to the J.C. campgrounds for a half-day run and only landed one adult before they had to leave for home. Not bad for a few days of fishing. All fish were released and all of them were caught on Brads Wigglers.

The lower Trinity River was producing a good run of half-pounders until the rains came. They were taking flies and small spinners. You had to work below the mouths of inflowing creeks, as they were the best areas for these young fish. Flies that worked best were Brindle Bug, Burlap Special and small Eureka Herniaters. Small Glo-Bugs and deep drifted skein patterns would pick up a small adult or two.

The Klamath was blown out so I didn't get a good report from there. Maybe after the flows start to drop, some good news will come out.