Central Valley

Lower American River

by Ed Hood October 25, 2013

Something that always baffles me is when I tell someone I fish the American River and they say, “American River? Where that?” completely unaware of its existence. This “little” river runs right through Sacramento and is a major tributary to the Lower Sacramento and has fish runs of all kinds, the most notable being: steelhead (summer & winter), salmon, shad, and stripers. It offers so many great and easy access points and when you’re on the water, you would have no idea that you are in the middle of a major city. Best of all, it’s a great day trip location: about 2 hours from San Jose.

Image courtesy of: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Americanrivermap.png

This particular post concentrates on the Lower American, below Folsom Lake. The Lower American is 30 miles long and full of excellent access points. If you are not familiar about this river, there are three forks that converge on Folsom Lake and have some quality trout in all of them. Anadromous fish can only go so far as the Nimbus fish hatchery at the dam. It should also be noted that if you don’t like to fish shoulder-to-shoulder, do not fish at the hatchery… especially when the salmon are running.

A few days ago, I went out to try and track down some half-pounder steelhead that were reported in. This time of year is when the salmon “egg bite” occurs as salmon spawn and steelhead and rainbow trout chow down on dislodged salmon eggs. The first spot my friend and I fished was the Upper Sunrise area, just below Sailor Bar. The Sunrise recreational area offers a ton of great riffles and holes to swing flies and to dead drift under an indicator. The flows were around 1,500 cfs, low for this river. I stuck with swinging all day with a streamer with a nymph trailer. If you are targeting half-pounders, it’s best not to go above a size 6 fly or else they may not be able to get in in their mouths. My friend had the same swinging rig set up and also brought out an indicator rig.

Fishing was slow at this location. There were a number of drift boats on the hunt for salmon but didn’t look like they were having much success. We noticed a few salmon redds (and made sure we stayed off of them!), but no salmon carcasses and very few in the river. Both of us had a couple of half-pounders on, but they easily shook the hook out as the strikes came right as we were about to cast again and we weren’t able to set the hook.

Courtesy of: Google Maps

We decided to move downstream to the River Bend Park area, which also has some fantastic swinging water. After fishing hard for a few hours, the story was the same as sunrise: low flows and very few fish seen. I had one missed hook set, but that was it. This is the time of year I have to get out of the habit of gentle trout hook-sets. The steelhead rivers need some rain badly. If this river can get up to around 2,000 cfs, I bet it will be on fire. My recommendation, give is a couple more weeks and monitor the flows… don’t believe the fishing reports on other fly shop websites right now.

Courtesy of: waterdata.usgs.gov — flow reading as of the writing of this post. Low and steady. Hopefully flows will spike to 2,000 and allow fish to come in.

Courtesy of Google Maps

For gear, a switch or spey rod will give you a huge advantage over single-handed rods. I broke out my Orvis Access 11′ 7-wt. rod out of its hibernation, which was really nice to start using again. Matched up with the Airflo Skagit Switch 420gr. head, this thing will throw anything. Every time I throw a switch rod, I’m always amazed at how much more efficiently I cover water. This isn’t a little trout stream, this is a big river with big flows. Do yourself a favor and leave the 9-foot rod at home.

For terminal tackle, I always bring out a sent of 10′ PolyLeaders with varying sink rates. You usually don’t have to worry about bringing a ton of tips, but having a set of intermediate, fast sink, and extra fast sink gives you a better chance to get the flies in the fish’s face in any given run. At the head of one riffle, I was fishing intermediate, and as I progressed down, switching out the PolyLeaders was a piece of cake. Just tie a loop to the exposed monofilament end of the leader and go loop-to-loop with tippet. I recommend at least 3x monofilament.

Limited back cast room and need to get out to 60-feet? The switch rod is the answer.

A section of the river at River Bend. Who says the American is always crowded? It’s easy to avoid people here. This photo was taken on Columbus Day, with crowds on the more talked-about holes, most likely smelling like skunk too.

All of the fish are moving up the far end of the river and the wading is tough? This was what was happening here, and a switch rod made it possible to fish the other side. Did I mention I love switch rods? :)