Steelhead report Trinity River California
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- This topic has 11 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Jan 24, 2008 at 3:42 pm by
Jim Lampros.
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Jan 23, 2008 at 1:58 am #2733
Joel ThompsonMemberI got the opportunity to go on a steelhead trip this past weekend in Northern California on the Trinity River. It was a great weekend and all who went caught fish. Only one of us didn’t catch a steelhead, but he did manage to catch a couple of browns. The weather was cool. It was below freezing both morning until a little after noon. The ice in the guides got to be very annoying at times. But the hook ups made it all worth while. I got lucky and caught the biggest fish of the weekend and it was a wild fish as well. I think the wild fish fight harder myself but I could be wrong. Anyhow here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure. They are not the best photos as the lens on my camera had a smudge on it but that life.
Tom and a nice Trinity Brown Trout.

Derrick and a Nice Trinity Steelhead. This was about the average size fish caught during the weekend.

Picture of a Steelhead right before releasing it back.

This guy is one of my clients and this is his first steelhead. Not bad!

And this is the big wild fish I caught. He measured out at 28 1/2 inches. I guessed him to weigh around ten pounds. He was a hard fighter and a beautiful fish.

Joel
Jan 23, 2008 at 2:07 am #22610Tim Pommer
MemberJoel, those are some damn gorgeous fish but for some reason they are being cut off on my screen.
Jan 23, 2008 at 2:11 am #22611
Jim LamprosMemberGorgeous is right. Very Nice fish Joel!
How did you guys go about covering that water?
JL
Jan 23, 2008 at 2:15 am #22612Neal Osborn
MemberJoel, great report and awesome pics. Hey, you don’t look anything like your dog on your avatar! Just out of curiosity, what leader/tippet were you using to land that big boy?
Jan 23, 2008 at 2:45 am #22613yuhina
MemberGreat fish! Joel
Jan 23, 2008 at 4:16 am #22614
Joel ThompsonMemberJim the water was pretty easy to cover if you are a descent roll caster. The toughest part about fishing the Trinity for me was it was a pretty narrow river and there are LOTS of big trees on the banks. It was hard for me in the beginning because I am use to having plenty of room to through casts. After catching a few trees I was a roll casting machine! Any how to answer your question we used the boat to float to deeper runs and then fished under indicators trying to get as long a drift as we could.
Neal, I used 2x flourocarbon leader and tippet. The only fish that broke me off was do to me catch a tree right before that and then not checking my line. The 10 ft Z-axis has a nice soft tip that really seamed to protect the tippet when fighting fish.
Joel
Jan 23, 2008 at 6:53 pm #22615
Tim AngeliMemberJoel,
Looks a fun trip.
Jan 23, 2008 at 8:49 pm #22616
Joel ThompsonMemberTim the double bead headed golden stone was money and so was a size 16 pheasant tail. Now I personally would not have even thought of using the pheasant tail but after watching the boat ahead of use pull out four or five fish I swallowed my pride and asked what the fish ate. Nice guys that they were they happily replied the pheasant tail.
Joel
Jan 24, 2008 at 12:39 pm #22617keith b
MemberThat was pretty cool of Nicholas Cage to go fishing with you
Jan 24, 2008 at 12:46 pm #22618spencer ballard
Member;D, When I read that N. Cage comment above I had to scroll back up, going through each picture a second time, when I got to Mr. Cage I laughed out loud pretty hard.
Jan 24, 2008 at 1:56 pm #22619
Joel ThompsonMemberThat was pretty cool of Nicholas Cage to go fishing with you 😮
I cannot imagine what one of those things would feel like. What size rods were you using?
Are you talking about the first picture? I can’t wait to tell Tom that!
I used a ten foot eight weight Sage Z-Axis. It worked great! One of my buddies had the same rod and the rest were using nine foot eight weights.
Joel
Jan 24, 2008 at 3:42 pm #22620
Jim LamprosMemberHaha! Spot-on look alike. Should’ve put him in an IA T-shirt for celebrity points in the photo contest!
JL
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