The Fishing Report: Tough steel heading continues

This has been, without a doubt, the most difficult steelhead season I have ever experienced. Usually, I am good for 20 or more fish landed and often released in a year and I am just a part-timer. Guys in the know, who have the time, should be able to land 30 or more fish in a season. One experienced angler I know named Robbie is usually good for 50 fish in a good season, but this year he has managed only five. I tend to fish around Healdsburg and so I have missed out on a lot of the action below Guerneville, but a quick check with Scott at Kings has pretty much confirmed that they are experiencing the same kind of thing down there. Fish are moving but not holding. Guys are getting fish when a pod moves through and if they are lucky enough to be where they are at that moment. This is a far cry from last year when the water was clear and the fish had to hold up.
A lot of anglers ask me how many fish the hatcheries are getting and clearly this is going to be a well above average year. So far at the Coyote Facility in Ukiah, over 2,500 fish have returned. I couldn’t get Warm Springs to answer but my guess is that they are well over 3,000. So, fish are in the river and for whatever reason they just aren’t very grabby. Maybe this week’s rain will change all of that. Steelhead season usually lasts through March and then tapers off. You can expect to see more of the blue backs, downers and smaller fish for the remainder of March.
Ocean salmon season opener may be around the corner. Predictions for the first weekend in April were somewhat put in jeopardy when the return counts and escapement numbers  came back for the winter salmon being less than what everyone had hoped for. Unfortunately, the winter salmon’s main rearing areas were in the Pit and Mcloud tributaries of the Sacramento River and have long been dammed up and cut off from the ocean. I don’t think there is really anything man is going to be able to do about the winter run of chinook without removing all of the dams in their way. The hatcheries just aren’t doing enough to support the run. The Keswick hatchery rears only 300,000 smolt and releases them directly into the Sacramento River where they are subject to all of the pumping, pesticides and other perilous activities before they are able to reach the ocean. And yet anglers are forced to bear the brunt of the sanctions to promote this obsolete species of salmon in the face of a rebuilding fall run of chinook. If you are interested in helping all Sacramento River salmon, consider joining the Golden Gate Salmon Association. There is a benefit dinner at the Freidman Center in Santa Rosa on April 4. For more information and tickets, you can go to their website at www.GGSA.com or contact me directly.
Spring bass season has started a few weeks early. Guys in the know are up at Lake Sonoma doing well, back in the creek arms where the water temps have reached the mid 50s. Football head jigs with brown or crawfish pattern trailers and spinner baits are doing well. The water is still pretty stained up and visibility is still only around two feet. Clear lake jumbo minnow fishing is off the hook. Really large bass are being caught with a slip bobber and a minnow right now. If you can fish during the week, you will avoid the multitude of bass tournaments on the weekends.
For more information and/ or reports, contact Hunt Conrad at Prospect Mortgage, 431-9715.