If you fish small streams with much brush then a 7 and a half foot rod is a consideration. I use one for small mountain streams where the fish are not too large (max about 14-16 inches) and it is great, easy to handle and cast, and pack about. With the strengh of most rods today you can use smaller ones, and even small rods can handle large fish and more heavy lines than in yesteryear. Adjust your lines and tippets to match, as suggestion by Ray Zee.

-Zeno

when i lived in reno i fished the carson river many times as it was one of my favorites. many years ago but lots of good sized fish for smallish water. those days i never ever saw anyone else on the river but me. i fished the truckee all along its length and my favorite spots were around the big boulders in the river near floristan and farad. i caught many decent browns there over 2 1/2 pounds. another spot for large browns is under the bridges in reno after dark.

I actually have a 7.5' 4-piece fly-spin combo that I picked up prior to the Yellowstone trip in '08. It packs away nicely, and I can keep it in a side pocket in a backpack.

...and we're back. The weather has been up-and-down for the last couple of weeks, but I'm going to try to head up into the mountains next week sometime to check out the all-year section of the Merced River (leveraging my so-called "funemployment".)

I ended up getting a 9' 5-weight rod/reel outfit from basspro and am eager to try it out.

google shad fishing in the sacramento river. they come up in the spring and also go into a few other rivers like the feather. the fishing is crazy good and they fight hard.

Fly fishing isn't complete unless you also read about it, though not everyone would agree with that statement. Ray's mention of shad brought this to mind. The Founding Fish , by John McPhee is about shad fishing, in the northeast. I received this book for Christmas and haven't finished it yet but so far it is very good.

Another current author (I'm deliberately passing on the fly fishing classics) that I like is John Gierach (Standing in a River Waving a Stick; Sex, Death, and Fly Fishing) both excellent reads. Ian Frazier (The Fish's Eye) and William G. Tapply (Gone Fishin') are equally good.

Suggestions by others welcome........


-Zeno

Just found this thread, looks like most of the content is freshwater. I used to flyfish a lot, haven't in the last 2 years since i moved to nyc, entirely in saltwater though. i went trout fishing for the first time ever in bariloche, argentina a couple weeks ago and had a lot of fun. they fought harder than i would have suspected. here was the best one i caught:

nice rainbow there. if you get time give us the details of the trip. sounds great.

Ray, if you're going to do the sac during the shad run,do it right: no sissy 6 wts. throw a 9 with a sink tip and a big (8" or so) white/silver streamer. find the pod of shad fishermen (usually right below the shad themselves and cast just below them. dead drift the streamer and hang on. biiiig sac river stripers are conditioned to set up behind the fishermen and pick off the released shad.

i didnt know there were still many strippers going up river anymore. bit they are the best if you can get them.

Ray,
there's a few hogs that never venture into the salt. big girls. there are a few spots along the american where you can get a high vantage point above the river. you can see these submarines sitting below pods of shad, just lurking and waiting to thin the herd.
saw a pod of fly fishermen c&r-ing shad once and, unknown to them, a 30+ lb bass was sitting below them (using them for structure!!) and sipping the released shad as they floated back from the fishermen's hands. looked like a brown sipping a spinner fall. all the while, the fishermen were oblivious.

Thanks, I actually was just down in Argentina on a general adventure for like a month and when I got to Bariloche I did some internet sleuthing and contacted a guide. It was really quite nice, I had never 'floated' or used any dry flies before (or really done much mending for that matter) and fun. I was really surprised how peaceful the whole day was--it was really nice not to have an engine going the whole day and I learned a lot (starting from zero) of how to try and fish for trout. I caught a couple smaller ones on a sinking line w wooly buggers later in the day and I thought that was pretty neat too.


When we stopped for lunch I was just sort of piddling around in the river throwing and I turned back and the guide set up a pretty solid spread of smoke salmon/trout/venison and a bunch of other delicious stuff (Quilmes=Argie beer). Sure beat the ham and cheese I am used to when on the ocean. And it was a lot nicer throwing a 6 weight w a dry fly in no wind than a 9weight into 15 kt winds all day.

Lee's Ferry...AZ

didn't catch a whole lot(brother caught a huge brown...rest of us 3-5 Rainbows...but the view was nice

living at its finest for sure. great trips need to be done or you miss out. thanks for the pictures.

skunk-o-rama yesterday - Merced River again. The river is already pretty high



By comparison, when I went last fall, I was getting strikes throwing a caddis close to that far rock wall (and I don't wade).

A little farther downstream, I pulled off by a large pool and saw mayflies flying around, so I scrambled down the bank at the tail end and started creeping forward and casting upstream.



Nada. Through the day, tried mayfly dries, nymphs under an indicator in the faster water, and a streamer, and really didn't even see any fish. I was ready to throw a nightcrawler or something into that last pool, but don't carry that around with me anymore.

some days nothing happens. but you need to get waders or you are too limited on where you can fish or cast.

when river is high you need to fish deep as the fish will be on the bottom and not surfacing much. those that will are right on the banks.

ot,
at least you got out there. gorgeous day yesterday.
might be a little early for dries on the merced. maybe some bwos coming off late, but the flows in the mountain rivers are cranking and pretty darned cold because of snowmelt until july or so. maybe a big stonefly nymph or even an egg fly or san juan worm fished deep.

just got back from san francisco on my spring poker trip. this is the time it gets good in montana until the runoff starts. in the bay area everyone was catching crabs off the piers so el nino must have been a barn burner for the salt water fisheries on the west coast.

Ray,
october...stripers...bring an 8 wt.

you should make this a FISHING (spin & fly fishing) thread...might get more action/pics that way

Agree. I'm hitting Roosevelt tomorrow and would certainly post some pics/info if the fly fisherman were okay with it. I'm also about 75% certain that I'm buying a bass boat in the coming months so some discussion on boats would be nice as well.

sounds good. and what roosevelt are you going to the one in washington on the columbia river?

as far as bass boats they dont do so well in rougher water so you are limited to lakes that dont get to windy.

Arizona, actually. CharlieDontSurf should know of it. It's probably one of the top five bass fishing hotspots in the Southwest. The lake has a slot program, meaning bass of a certain size have to be thrown back but anything longer or shorter than the slot length can be kept (I just catch and release so I don't really care anyhow) so there is a healthy population of quality fish. There are some gargantuan catfish in there too, there is no doubt in my mind that 100+ pound flatheads live by the dam.


I didn't take any pictures today but I fished from dawn til it got too hot (around 1PM) and caught 9-10 largemouth bass. Air temps started at about 41 degrees when we got on the water and 78 when we put the boat on the trailer, waters temps ranged from 61-68 and clarity varied from clear to slight stain. We caught 4 slots, 2 overs and 2 unders by pitching creature imitations and Senkos close to tree stumps in 4-10 feet of water. I don't think the spawn has started yet as I didn't see any fish on beds so no lizard-on-the-bed action

Pretty good day overall, I plan on making a few more day trips before it gets hot enough that night fishing is the only option.

what is the fishing like at saquarro lake east of phoenix. i was out there and liked the area. people were catching some trout in the river below the dam and i saw boats fishing on the lake.

As far as I know Saguaro was hit with an algae bloom a few years ago and the fish population is starting to get healthy but the fish themselves are still fairly small. Probably a good choice for folks with children because they'll catch decent numbers and there shouldn't be too many other boats on the water.

Here's a 14 pound largemouth that was caught at Roosevelt last week. I think a new state record will come out of there within the next year: