Welcome to DFF

We have an opportunity to attend a series of casting classes. The classes are 3 hours each, limited to 5 participants and $30 each. The classes are held in San Ramon so we would need to commute. If you are interested, drop the webmaster a note at the bottom of this page!

It has always been a little Dream of mine to fish the upper Sac. I mean I have passed by it so many times on trips to Seattle and Portland and to visit close friends in Ashland. This river has been calling me for most of my life. My Dad was a rock nut when I was a young teenager, and he own the mineral rights to a Mercury mine located on the unimproved side of the Rogue River and we would spend almost every summer, doing assessment work on the mine, but mostly, camping and trout fishing. Back in those days, I would make the long ride in the back of the pickup with my black lab, and as we passed the Sac on the old 99 and now Interstate 5, I would envision myself standing on the banks of the Sac in some obscure canyon trying to catch that elusive Brown trout. The Sac has been calling me for a long time. Then a couple December’s ago, at a DFF General Meeting, Mark Delabarre shared his trip of the upper Sac and Lake Siskiyou with a friend. And my dream was rekindled by his success and his plan based mostly, around the idea, to just go and figure out the rest once you got there. Where to go, etc. Last year, I tried it in early September, and couldn’t even set up camp at Castle Crags state Campground, due to high temps and sweltering heat, with very little breeze. The campground was sandwiched between Int. 5 and the major rail line for Union Pacific Rail Line, and is a testament to man’s advancement in automobile and railroad noise. The noise level was very excessive, so last year, I said no to the dream and moved up to the McCloud River where cooler temps made everything better.

So fast forward to 2018, we gave it one more try, and because it was mid October, the best month of the year for vacationing anywhere, we got her done. Our trip was Wednesday through Sunday. Wednesday and Sunday are kinda travel days, with set-up and tear down camp days. We scheduled Thursday, for a day on the lower Sac, with Scott Sugimoto, On the Riffle guide service, out of Redding. In the last week and a half, Scott took our club VP Amy and Pres. Jerry N. for a full day, Charlie R. twice, Bob F. once, and myself and my friend John Watson. You don’t get cheated with Scott, he knows the river as well as anyone, his boat is equipped with an out-board motor, so making revisits to pockets on the river does not require long row backs. Scott fired up a stove at lunch time and made pulled pork sandwiches on the river. Delicious!  We met Scott at eight AM and got off the water twice but we were pulling out for the second time at 7:30 PM, well after dark. He put us on fish all day and I personally landed a 20 to 22 inch steelhead and many others. But what is best about Scott is his passion for fly fishing, his river, the fish, and his inherent need to share his love of the sport. He looks like he’s 30, but he’s actually 50 with one daughter in college and another a senior in high school. If your thinking of a float on the lower Sac, Scott is a great choice to spend the day with. You will not be disappointed. You haven’t had enough fun until he has you fishing dry flies by moonlight. So not a bad beginning to my little dream trip.

Friday, was a seek and find water access to the river day. We started with the La Moine exit off I5 which was also the recent fire zone. This area is odd and strange to see, with scorch barren trees and without any foliage on the forest floor. Eerie and almost surreal black poles with red clay at their base. If it was a manzanita bush it was completely erased by the fire.  Our fishing access still consisted of walking the rail line and finding a path to the water. Fishing wasn’t very good. Not sure whether it was us or an environment trying to recover from fire retardants on the ground. Later in the day and north of the fire area, we used Soda Creek exit and and found fish and was joined by Mike N. Who proceeded to catch about eight fish in about an hour and a half. We were north of the fire zone and were surrounded by beauty. At one point, I look back at my friend on the water, standing mid river, and Castle Crags peaks in the back ground. Fall colors were beginning to show themselves in reds and yellows. This trip was meeting my expectations.

Saturday, had a slow start. We camp at the Crags state campgrounds, the same one I rejected a year earlier. The bad news was the noise level was still excessive but the good news was that bathrooms were heated and had showers. All other campsites in the park were closed including the sites Mark used, called Riverview. Sites right on the river allowing for evening fishing from your camp site. In fact all the camp sites in the area, including Sims Flat were closed as well. It was down right chilly in the Morning and we didn’t see daylight until about 7AM. We bought some recommended flys from Ted Fay’s fly shop and got directions on fishing the river running through Dunsmuir. We fish there in the AM with little success. Our only real success was back out of Soda Creek exit, so we decided to return there that afternoon.

This spot was from a parking lot with at least five no trespassing signs per Castle Crags Inc. Not real sure, what to make of the signs given that the lot had another four cars in it with families at the river’s edge. We walked south and returned to a nice pool, a dogged leg right with a the current hugging the far right of the turn. Mike N. showed us how to swing our emerger fly to the far side of the seam without an indicator. I caught a couple plants and my friend John caught a really nice 17 to 18 inch bow, or maybe a steelhead, using a big orange salmon fly on the last cast of the night, during a giant stone fly convention. For well over an hour, these big flys poured like bats out of the trees to ova drop into the water, up and down the river. This spectacular example of the river providing a stage for an environmental life cycle. In that hour before sunset, literally hundreds of flying frantically, 3 inch stone flys, flying seemingly without destination, save the females, who would water skip and land momentarily and then lift off fluttering, only to quickly re-land and deposit an egg or eggs. Then suddenly, with the arrival of the coolness of the coming darkness, makes them disappear, as if in a game of hide-and-seek.   So magically, or in the twilight period of time, they appear and then disappear, leaving no evidence they had been there. Unless you count the tiny eggs deposited in the darkness of the river. During it all, the fishing seems unaltered by their arrival as we caught several fish with emergers. Stunningly, I will never get tired of connecting to nature, and watching the simple beauty of the earth replenishing itself. Our sport of fly fishing has provided me this opportunity to see this and connect me with nature in way which brings a depth to my relationship with the environment.

 I think the upper and lower Sac is still calling me?  As for my friend and I, we are glad we made it to our destination.  As for my dream, I can close my eyes, and it’s not hard to see a young boy standing on the edge of the Sac, in some obscure canyon, trying to catch that elusive brown trout.