It Was Just A Monday Adventure

General Trout Season opened on Saturday April 29th. As you all know upcountry has been buried in snow up to their wazoo.

Oh, before I go any further, the trip to Mount Lassen Volcanic National Park got cancelled. Not looking for any comments here, but Katherine's ex and the father of her daughter, got killed in a car vs train accident last Monday. We decided it would be better to be here in case her daughter needed her. As it turned out, she was way stronger than we thought and with the exception of lunch on Saturday, she has come through just fine. So please, no condolences needed. I barely knew the guy.

So today I decided to take a drive up to Cat Creek Rd and see if the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River was accessible. As in the past, just getting to the river was a challenge in Spring.

The first problem I ran into was the downed trees across the road. Thankfully someone (probably the Forest Service) was nice enough to go through and cut a passage.  

Big tree, small hole

 Then another.

 And another

As you can see in picture above, the snow started to show up. The drive from the highway to the river is about 8 miles.

More snow.

And some more.

OK, a little more here. 

Hey, nothing I couldn't handle. Right.

This was just around the corner. No going past this one. Be a couple more weeks before this is clear enough to get by.

So I made a Ya'll can turn and headed toward the house. Had to stop in Pine Grove (up the road from Jackson) at the nursery for a couple more vegetable plants.

But before that happened, I made a sharp right on the road to PIPI Valley Campground to see if it was accessible. Sure enough, clear all the way.

The creek was running a little high, but there were a couple of small pools that looked promising. I would like to note at this time, that the last few times I've fished here (this is also the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River) I've only caught one fish after walking the whole river from Day Use parking to the upper end of the campground. A distance of about a mile.

I started with a Sloan's Paralyzer just to the right of that rock in the middle. With "3" I was able to get several good casts, but still lost a couple flies to the trees.  

The I decided to see if I could navigate my way down to the pool under the bridge. Pools under bridges seem to be good on this river.

The following picture is from just under the bridge, down stream. When a dry didn't get any results, I put on a big, fat, nymph kind of bug and with a Tungsten bead and went deep. Worked it back and forth in the pool and even let it drift down stream a ways. Not a nibble.

Just for the record, I took another shot downstream. Thought you might enjoy the clarity of the creek.

On the way out, I stopped for a picture of the Dogwoods in bloom. I miss the ones we had out behind the house up the hill.

Dogwoods in bloom

It was a nice drive. About 50 degrees outside. I didn't take the water temp, but you can trust me on this, it was cold.

Made my stop in Pine Grove, stopped at Lowe's to pick up a new sprinkler timer and called it a day.

May get out to Amador or Camanche later in the week.

Stay tuned.