Syns, Twins and Fins

Jeff Richelieu asked me last minute to share a boat and guide with him on the Feather River for steelies last Friday. I could not say no. It’s been a while since I’ve fished with Jeff and it’s always fun.

We met our guide Ryan Johnston of Chico in Oroville and launched at the RV park. It was  not long before Jeff hooked up. These fish are very healthy looking, fresh, spring run steelhead. Small nymphs where what the wanted. I learned a lot about the river and it was great to share the boat with Jeff. Ryan was a very competent guide and got us into 16 steelies and many suckers! I landed 7 and Jeff landed 9. We’ll have to get away and do that agin Jeff!

Uncle Wesley has been fishing this very nice looking bass lake for awhile this season and has told us how great the bass fishing was and is. He agreed to show us the lake and be our “guide”. This lake is located just outside the town of Wheatland, about an hour and a half from our home. We decided to fish in teams of 2 with Michael sharing Uncle Wesley’s boat and Matthew sharing the boat with me. Each bass was worth points. Any bass under 13 inches was worth 1 point, a 13 incher was worth 3, a 14 incher was worth 4, a 15 incher was worth 5 and anything over 16 inches was worth 10.

Uncle Wesley and Michael fished the Bear River arm and Matthew and I fished the rocky dam face. When we met up for lunch the score was tied at 29! Since there was a tie we decided to switch boys, I got Michael and Uncle Wesley got Matthew the rest of the day.

In our boat Michael was tearing it up with his jerk bait! He was out fishing me 4 to 1. When the day was over our boat won with the score of 44 to 35. That was a great mini tournament and it would be fun to do that again. Thanks Uncle Wesley for showing us the lake and for the fantastic lunch!

The boys were invited again this year to tie at the Fly Tying Expo at Turtle Bay and it was great fun. The boys tied striper flies again and there were a few guests that requested their flies. Sherry Steele (director of the big NorthWest tying Expo in Albany OR.) invited the boys to tie at the 2015 show in Albany. Not sure we can make it but it sure was nice of Miss Sherry to ask us.

From there we headed to the Fly Fishing Only section of the Trinity River. The smolts had been flushed out the week before with the series of storms we had but there were a lot of adult fish in the system. We were prepared to fish for the smolts so our flies were small (#14 Elk Hair Caddis). The boys had their chances on those big steelies. Michael had 5 adults take his fly but no hook ups. Matthew had 4 take his with no connection. I had 2 come to the fly and hooked one of them but lost it after about 15 seconds.

Oh well, definitely worth the drive out there. There’s always next year.

Boy what a whirlwind the past few months. With birthdays and traveling for work, basketball games and tournaments for all three kids, it was almost non stop action all winter long. Not much fishing other than fishing the backyard pond. The pond has trout, black bass, crappie, blue gill and sunfish in it. The boys have caught all the species present and now we wait through the summer to see if the trout make it. The pond is 20 feet deep and we have installed diffusers and a couple recirculating pumps to move water. Hopefully that will be enough for the trout to survive the hot Chico summers. I will be very happy if we see a tout in the fall!

I took the kids to Lake Oroville yesterday but forgot about about the full moon and muddy waters. We had some bites and had a couple fish on but none landed. We met up with another boat and they said they fished from 8 am to 2pm with only one landed. Tough day!

Our next trip is most likely going to be Pyramid lake or the Delta.

It’s not often that we don’t have family commitments throughout Thanksgiving weekend. After a “hotpot” meal with the Syn side of the family at my sisters’s house in Citrus Heights on Thursday, the boys and I headed up to Sparks Nevada for a couple days fishing on Pyramid Lake. Friday morning we made the near hour drive to Warrior Point. The weather was 2 to 5 mph wind and sunny skies. Temps were in the high 20’s when we got there but warmed to the low 50’s during the day. The boys landed 7 fish total and all were caught on various black wooly buggers. Michael landed the biggest fish of the day that went 29 inches. Might have been longer but it was tough to handle a big fish like this. The fishing was slow for us but at least they caught some good ones.

The next morning we had mostly the same weather except a little more cloudy. We fished only the morning and the boys landed 4 fish. Always great fishing Pyramid because of the potential of getting into a huge Pilot Peak fish.

I had not fished Warrior point before and was learning and scouting the area as we fished. If I had more experience there the numbers would have been much better. Pop B (Benson) gave us some tips but it would have been much better if he had come with us. Great trip with the boys as usual. They said they had a GREAT time.

We have been hearing about great fishing on Lewiston Lake for many weeks now but we have not had the time to go or the forecast was for wind the day we wanted to go. Yesterday the forecast was great AND we had the free time to go! We started fishing at 9:50 am and the weather was perfect, light breeze and air temps in the low 50’s. We could  not find  the fish at first. We motored around for a good 45 minutes before we found a large pod on a flat. The boys caught fish immediately on #18 olive midge pupas under and indicator and we followed the fish for the next hour sight fishing for them.

After lunch we found a huge school that we stayed on for the next 2.5 hours. The boys caught all the fish in the afternoon on a small olive, black and brown leeches. It did not matter what color we used.

I would have rated the overall fishing excellent if the size of the fish were larger. The boys did not land anything over 14 inches. We were hoping for some of the larger fish we’d been hearing about but they did not show for us. The boys landed 38 fish and lost a couple dozen more. In one of the pics you can see one of the pods of fish the boys were fishing too.

I had a chance to fish the Louisiana marsh during the American Dental Association convention in New Orleans last week. The boys really wanted to go but school was in session and there was no way we were going to take them out of school for this trip. Melanie and I brought 3 of my staff members that have never been there before and they had a great time. We met Meng and his wife Gina there as well.

Meng and I booked for 3 days but one and a half days were canceled due to bad weather. The day in a half we were out, we made the best out of tough conditions. The first day the guide said it was the absolute worse conditions possible for redfish fishing. It was overcast, windy and no tides. He said if it got worse he would cancel the trip. Turns out the next day was canceled!

We did manage to hook and land some reds to 15 pounds and two big black drum to 28+ pounds. It was still a great trip and of course the food was fantastic. We ate at Antione’s, Dicky Brennan’s and R’evolution.

We fished the Biloxi Marsh in the Hopedale area. This was a new area for us and it has high potential with good weather. We have fished the Houma area a few times, Buras and the Lafitte regions. They all had something special to offer. One of the issues with the Biloxi Marsh is that it is about an hour from our hotel in New Orleans. It was convenient that the guides picked us up at the hotel but it was still a long drive to and from the launch ramp. Once at the launch ramp it was a 35 minute plus ride to the fishing grounds, so it made for long commutes each way.

Here is a video of our day and a half fishing. http://vimeo.com/78488709

Our next trip down there I think we will stay closer to the Hopedale area to shorten our drive to the launch.

This morning all three urchins wanted to go fish the Feather River for steelhead. It was a full moon and usually I don’t fish much during that phase of the moon but I figured they could at least see Alaska type numbers of salmon in the riffles. The salmon did not disappoint. I can’t remember seeing this many salmon in the river and have never seen so many eggs in the water. The kids hooked up almost immediately but the fish were not steelies. Too many salmon around and too many free floating eggs in the water. The steelhead have an abundance of food floating down to them. We saw Mr. Kenny there and he hooked many salmon but also managed to get one steelhead! That’s persistence!

The river had the typical awful odor of decaying salmon and Emma could not bear it for very long. We fished for a couple hours then left for town for breakfast.

Great to be out with all three kids this morning.

The boys have been waiting a long time for the striper season on the delta. I have been checking the weather reports for the delta for a few weeks now and it has been windy just about every time we are available to go.  This past Sat. the weather forecast was favorable at 3-8 MPH breeze…..so off we went.

Uncle Wesley met us there and we were launched by 6:40am. We looked for birds working and tried topwater patterns to no avail. We switched to sub surface lies and hooked a few here and there. At one point in the morning it was blowing pretty hard so we had to find cover in a protected area. THAT WAS NOT FORECAST.

We ended the day with 14 landed and lost a handful near the boat. Not too bad but definitely not what it should have been.

Matthew landed the 3 biggest fish, one on a RattleTrap and the other 2 on small Clouser Minnows.

We’ll keep looking for another opportunity to head back to the delta.

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My trip to Alberta this year was not what we expected. After last year’s incredible hopper fishing, we were all looking forward to similar fishing for 2013. It was not to be. Five days before we arrived a huge T storm hit the area and doubled the flows on River X. We had never seen water come over the spillway before in August.

hat did not stop us from fish. We had to alter our tactics a bit and fished nymphs and streamers most of the week.  Our group (Meng Syn, Jon Leonard, Roland Kumagai, Victor Inouye and Kenny Oda) all did OK considering the conditions.

I actually left River X one day to float another river (Waterton)! That is unheard of for me. It paid off because we fished hoppers to big browns all day and it was a beautiful river.

River X never improved while we were there. Big fish of the week there was caught by Roland (as usual) but I did get some nice quality fish.

One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a snail mine near the river. Yes I said snail, but not an ordinary snail. These 80 million year old petrified nautilus’ were fascinating to see. These guys mine the snails from the mud and put them together piece by piece. A completed specimen can go for as high as $50K. The completed snail in these photos has a price tag of $29,000! No wonder he has a death grip on that thing!