Trinity River Spey Schools

Steelhead on the Spey Guide Service will be partnering up with Lance Gray and Company to host two spey schools on the lower Trinity River. These schools will focus on spey and switch rod casting and fishing. The school’s curriculum covers rods, reels and lines. The instructors will show you how to setup your rods to your advantages for different situations based on real hands on instruction during the school. We will cover flies, sink tips and poly leaders. The students will have the opportunity to use and explore other equipment. We also encourage the students to bring their own equipment to learn with and for us to tune up. Curriculum also includes reading water, locating holds and determining which technique should be used to make a cast to that fish.
This two day school is for four students. The school will give students one on one instruction with three different instructors.

Dates for the schools are –

December 11 & 12, 2010 Full
December 18 & 19, 2010

Cost is $450 for the two day school with lunch and equipment provided. If you have any questions, feel free to email us at speybum@gmail.com

JH

Find what work's for you...

One of the biggest challenges in the two handed game is finding a properly matched fly line for your fishing needs.

Guiding two-handed spey fishing and working in a fly shop part time, the biggest question that gets asked is the same one over and over again! What is the best line for my spey rod? Sometimes this can be tougher to answer than one might think. Let me first start by asking you a few questions to make this easier for both of us...

Where do you like to fish?
What time of the year?
Do you like a lighter load or a deeper, heavier load?
Do you like a more traditional longer length line or shorter shooting head line?
Do you want this line to be extremely versatile or excel in a specific area?

The reasons for these questions is that right now in the two-handed market there is a lot to choose from in rods, reels, and lines. While there are very few "bad" spey rods being built these days, there are spey rods that will feel/cast like shit when they improperly lined. The biggest key is finding the Spey line to fit your needs.

Let's now jump right into the various types of lines available to the consumer.

Old School, aka Long Bellies and Traditional Spey Lines:
These are the lines I learned to cast with almost 10 years ago. These are a more traditional spey line with head lengths in the 52-85' range. Great for casting flies longer distances on large rivers. They require a lot more back casting room and do well with flies in the #1/0-#10 range. Good luck with a big string leech or intruder though! These lines are popular on summer/fall steelhead rivers like the Deschutes, Clearwater, Thompson, and Klamath rivers. These lines have evolved a bit over the years and are now a little better to cast. Here are a few popular ones for anglers to consider in the 7-11 weight range.
- Rio Windcutter(old standby)
- Rio Powerspey
- Airflo Delta and Delta Long
- CND GPS
- Nextcast Winter Authority and Fall Favorite

Scandinavian Lines:
These lines are shooting head style lines that have a lot of taper to them. They range in length from 28-44' and are designed to have good turnover with small to medium size flies. These lines gained popularity in Europe and in the last few years have made a big splash in North America on rivers like the Deschutes, Trinity, and Klamath. These lines are easier to cast than traditional spey lines but not quite as easy and forgiving as Skagit lines. Here are some popular Scandi heads in the 5-9 weight range...
- Airflo Compact Scandi
- Beulah Elixir
- Guideline Powertaper
- Rio AFS
- Vision Ace

Skagit Lines:
Here's what I think can be some of the most versatile fishing lines on the market. A line for all season and all conditions. Skagit lines were designed to throw large flies on heavy sink tips in the Pacific Northwest. What many don't know is that if you take a lighter skagit head, add a 7.5-10' floating tip that is equal in grain weight to the skagit head you would use to throw sink tips and big flies, you get a great line for summer/fall dry line fishing. For example, if you throw a 450 grain skagit head for sink tip work, you would want the total length of your skagit head plus floating tip for summer/fall fishing to equal 450 grains. Skagit heads vary in length from 20-34' and can fit switch/spey rods from 5-12 weights. The following are some of most popular skagit lines on the market at the moment.
- Airflo Compact Skagit
- Beulah Tonic
- Rio Skagit Flight
- Rio Skagit Short

All of the aforementioned lines are great for the two handed rod. Some will excel in certain situations where other will struggle. The key is to find the right line for your casting style, where you like to fish, and the time of year you like to fish. Or, if you are looking for one line to do it all, then I would certainly recommend a Skagit line.

JH

Steelhead Weather Part 2

It finally happened, the Trinity River blew out late this morning from just above Junction City down to the mouth. The river in Willow Creek and Hoopa doubled in size overnight and is still climbing at 1500+ cfs. The good thing is the big part of the storm is gone and we are just seeing some light showers now. The river should crest at any time and begin to drop shortly. As soon as it begins to drop and clear we should see some fresh fish pushing up the river and good fishing for the next couple off weeks.

On a more positive note. I spent the last couple of days with Ryan Miller and Andy Guibord. We had some good fishing until the river blew. All fish have been very bright and are a blast on light spey and switch rods. Here are a few pics from the last couple of days...

October is almost here....

and i hope that it is going to bring cooler weather than we have had up here on the Trinity in September. It has been too damn hot, which has made the steelhead fishing a low light game for the last couple of weeks. Every once in a while we have hooked a fish mid day but almost all our action has been first or last light. Water temps are still in the mid to upper 60's and once they drop, the fish should become even a little grabbier!

This past week saw a few big pods of salmon and steelhead move into the river. Most steelhead were of the hatchery variety but Rick Anderson managed to land this beautiful wild buck on a floating line.

The same day Jim Zech managed a nice fish on a skated muddler.

The following three days Rudd Corwin landed his first ever steelhead on a spey rod swinging flies. One of the hottest steelhead I have ever seen hooked in the lower Trinity. Rudd managed to land two steelhead and a handful of bright half pounders. A successful trip for his first time swinging flies on the lower Trinity River.

While fishing is not quite as hot as the weather, we have had steelhead to the fly 5 of the last 6 days. A good push of half pounders has shown as well and are also adding to the mix. In the next couple of weeks, we will see big pushes of steelhead into the Trinity and this is the best time to chase these fish on skated dries and swung wet flies. The grabs are exhilirating and the fish are hot. I only have a few dates available in the next few weeks which should see some of the best floating line steelheading on the year!

JH

Pleasanton Fly Fishing Show

The Fly Fishing Show is in Pleasanton, CA this upcoming Friday thru Sunday February 27-March 1. For those of you that might be attending, I will be in the Beulah Fly Rods booth. Come by and say hi and check out Beulah's new line of Platinum Series Spey rods. These are one of the best new models of spey rods on the market right now and are extremely smooth and easy to cast. Not to be overlooked by their great Elixir and Tonic lines, switch rods, and Bluewater rods. I hope to see you there.

Jason Hartwick

California's North Coast Winter Steelhead

California's North Coast rivers offer a great opportunity at hooking winter steelhead on the fly in a beautiful surrounding. Many of these rivers run through some of California's largest redwood forest and provide an amazing backdrop when fishing for winter steelhead. Rivers such as the Eel, South Fork Eel, Van Duzen, Mad, and all host good returns of wild steelhead and offer the chance at hooking the steelhead of a lifetime. While most winter steelhead in these rivers average 6-8 lbs, fish in the 14-20lb range are hooked each year. The down side of fishing these North Coast rivers is that they tend to blow out rather easily when we get rain and can take anywhere from 1-3 weeks to come back into fishable shape. When they do drop into shape the fishing can be great as many fresh fish will pour into these systems after a storm. Some rivers clear quicker than others and can provide fishing for a lot longer period of time than say the main stem of the Eel. The South Fork Eel is one of those. We tend to spend more time of the SF Eel than any other system because it clears quicker and stays in shape longer.

Because of this I usually do not book trips too far in advance. What I am going to do is put together a call and email list of those intretsed in trips on the coast and or specific rivers one would like to fish. I will give you 3-7 days notice of when a system will drop into shape and a fishing forecast. This will allow us to have good fishable conditions and not have to worry about a certain date being blown out and having to rebook. That being said, if you do want to book a date so that it is reserved that will work as well.

These rivers are a great place for swinging flies on spey rods for chrome bright winter steelhead. We utilize spey and switch rods on the 10'6" to 14' range and skagit style fly lines with heavy sinktips to target these flies. This style of fishing is not for the faint of heart and typically requires casting skagit style lines with 10-12' of T-14 and flies in the 2-6 inch range to target these winter steelhead.

For those interested, please send me an email with a contact number to get a hold of you when these rivers begin to fish. Our time frame for fishing these rivers in from mid December to March 31 when most fo the rivers close to fishing. Thank you and happy holidays. Go for the grab!

Jason Hartwick