Clear Water

Spent the last few days working up at Clear Water Lodge on the Pit River. I drove up Sunday early Afternoon to fish Lake Briton. This is the lake that Pit #3 comes out of and I have always heard that it had a really good population of Small Mouth and that fishing for them was pretty decent. One of those places I have been meaning to fish for years but just never made the point to drag the boat up and fish it.

That said I was glad I did. The lake is obviously full of water skiers and such but as you move back up into the Lake the structure is really cool. Lots of big weed beds and downed timber on the banks. When ever I fish a lake, especially a big inpoundment, I figure if I catch a fish I am lucky as it can take a while to get things dialed in and find fish on larger bodies of water. That said the fishing was great. I caught largemouth around the timber and smallies, carp, and blue gill around the weeds. Top water fishing around the weeds as the sun went down was really good and dragging streamers along with weeds prior to this was productive as well. Overall a really pretty lake and one that has a ton of fishing opportunities.




Working up at Clear Water is always a blast. Spent the 3 days with one client who was a beginning angler. Spent the first day fishing Hat Creek and Burney Creek throwing small nymphs and dries. Fishing was good as these bodies of water stay cool even when it gets hot based on the cold water springs that feed them.

One fun thing about Clear Water is based on the schedule if your clients don't want to fish after dinner you are free to go out and fish. So the first night there Ginno Bernero, Brannon Santos, and Darren Deel and I went out and fished the Hex Hatch on Fall River. While this hatch is epic the fishing lasts maybe 30-40minutes at best....that said I rose 5 fish and hooked none...my dry fly mojo was not happening. Darren landed 2 fish and Gino missed at least as much as me...while Brannon filmed and snapped some photos. Fun night.

Day 2 but the drift boat in at Baum Lake and fished the main body and then rowed up to the power house and fished. Again good day and a great opportunity for a beginner to hook up on fish. We did hook up in the power house on one monster fish that my client kept on for a good 5minutes until breaking him off as we were trying to get him up off the bottom - kinda hard on 6x and size #20 midges to much with a 20-25" 5+lb fish.

That night I went out with Jay Cochran a guide there and fished the Power House #2 riffle. Didn't really go off but I did manage to hook tons of dinker fish and a few nice fish on caddis dries.

Last day I took my client to the Power House #2 riffle in the morning and we were able to nymph up a few nice fish on small mayfly nymphs and even threw a few trico spinners as there were some fish up eating those. We spent the afternoon up in Cassel flats stalking fish in the channels and we were able to hook a few nice fish there as well.

Over all a good stay and really fun to watch a beginning angler get better over the course of a 3 day stay. I am home here for a few days and should get out striper fishing tomorrow then back up to Clear Water this weekend through early next week. Stay tuned.