Fly Fishing the Lower McCloud River, California
While in the McCloud River area working on my California Heritage Trout Challenge, I took a day to fish the Lower McCloud below McCloud Resevoir. The river runs through a steep and narrow canyon and access is limited by the geography and private land. I made reservations at the Nature Conservancy-Kerry Landreth Preserve, which offers some of the only publicly-available access along the river in this area. The Preserve is well publicized online and a number of local fly shops offer guided trips on the river. It seems to be as famous a fly fishing water as exists in the state of California and I was excited for my day there. I’ll cut to the chase: I didn’t like it for reasons I’ll detail below. I guess I’m glad I gave it a shot, but it’s not high on the list for a return visit.
Logistics
Fishing the Nature Conservancy property requires a permit/tag, which can be reserved online or one can take their chances by walking up. There are ten total tags, half available via reservation and half available to walk-up anglers. The good news is the reservation is free so there is no real cost of making one then not showing up, other than taking up a spot for another angler. I was surprised that I was able to make a reservation about a week before my visit, and when I arrived, only two reservation tags were used, and none of the walk-up tags were taken. It was in the middle of the week, but this was mid-July, seemingly prime fishing season. Though there are only ten tags, there are cabins on the Nature Conservancy property and people staying in those cabins apparently do not have to reserve tags. While only two tags were taken on my visit, there were at least five people fishing the river. It wasn’t a big deal in terms of crowds as the property has between two and three miles of river, but I could imagine a full complement of ten anglers plus another ten or so from the cabins (I’m not sure how many people can stay in them) making for a somewhat crowded day.
The Preserve is accessed down a bad forest road that dead ends near the preserve entrance. Parking is a bit tricky as there are only a few dedicated spots and some turnouts. Again, it’s tough to imagine the parking situation on a crowded day. The real issue is the road. From the town of McCloud, a paved road leads down toward the lake then splits off from a road to the boat ramp and turns into a good forest road that climbs along the western shore while heading south. There is another right turn, the road climbs higher until it reaches an intersection, then descends to the southwest into the McCloud drainage below the dam. These turns are mostly not signed and drivers need to pay attention to the direction they’re headed. Near the Preserve, there are a few side roads that go down to the river, but stay on the main road which hugs the slope and continues parallel to the river until the road dead-ends.
From the first turnoff onto the dirt road to the end of the road, it’s about seven miles, and from the top of the ridge down into the canyon, the road is absolutely horrible. It does not require four wheel drive, at least when the road is dry, but it is incredibly bumpy and rocky, making for a miserable driving experience. On the way out, it took me about 45 minutes to travel the seven miles. It honestly feels like the road quality is kept this way intentionally to make sure only dedicated anglers reach the water, and to make the experience feel more adventurous, like you’re heading into the wilderness. All it actually did was annoy me and extend my time in the car; there is no excuse for the Forest Service or the Nature Conservancy or whomever owns the road not to do some basic maintenance.
River Access and Wading
Upon parking at the road terminus, one must walk about a quarter of a mile to reach the camp itself. There is a bulletin board explaining the logistics of the tags, reporting requirements, etc. It’s all very straightforward. The camp has a bathroom, water, tables, and shade. From the camp, a trail parallels the river, allowing anglers to spread out downstream. Unfortunately, access is not as easy as it sounds. The trail stays above the river, anywhere from five to ten feet, and the canyon is very steep in most places. When an angler sees a place they want to fish, they need to scramble down the bank through bushes and rocks to access the river. In many spots, this isn’t particularly easy or possible, especially if the brush is thick or the embankment is particularly steep. As a result, anglers tend to favor a few particular spots and in these spots there tend to be obvious side trails down to the river. My issue with all of this is that it’s difficult to work the river in the way I’d like, moving around, hitting long stretches of water by wading or bank walking upstream. Instead, I had to negotiate the brush and rocks down to a spot, fish it for awhile, hike back up to the trail, walk down the trail to the next accessible spot and do it all over again. It also means despite the three possible river miles in which to fish, most people congregate at a few obvious, accessible holes. The fish in these holes almost certainly see a ton of flies.
The wading was also very challenging. Other people I spoke to seemed shocked I didn’t have a wading staff! I’ve never used a wading staff in my life, and I wasn’t about to buy one for this particular river, but I acknowledge it would have been helpful. The river seemed very high to me, but the guide I spoke with said it was only slightly higher than normal. The river was definitely bankfull and while there were spots where one could conceivably wade to near the center of the river, I was completely limited to hugging the eddies along the side of the river. I also found the river quite slick, though admittedly, my wading boots are worn out and do not grip as well as they should. The flow and the slickness, combined with the cloudy water which limited visibility and made it impossible to see where I was stepping, meant I had to pick a spot and stand there.
As I mentioned before, this is not how I like to fish. I almost always wade upstream and cover a lot of ground. This allows me to find fish, figure out what’s working and what isn’t, and discover the intricacies of the river. On the McCloud, I could only stand and fish a hole for awhile, then climb back up the bank, walk down the trail, and repeat the process. Looking back, I realize I couldn’t find any rhythm, and I feel like I spent a lot of my time walking the trail rather than fishing.
Fishing Quality
Well, aside from that how was the fishing? Total crap. I hooked one 12 inch rainbow trout that broke off before I could net it. Aside from that, not a thing. Most people were using nymphs suspended about three feet beneath bobbers or indicators, and I initially tried my standard prince nymph with hare’s ear or zebras, in size 12 and 14 or 16. I spoke with a guide who said my nymph rig was too deep and too small. He gave me some rubber legs which were bigger, and advised I use nothing smaller than a 12, while drifting only two feet or so beneath the surface. I tried that for awhile and nothing happened.
In fact, the guide I spoke with said his client had some success in the morning, then radio silence. I asked every other person I came across on the trail whether they were having success and they uniformly said no. In fact, one of the cabin guests laughed and said they hadn’t caught anything the day before either. I am completely aware that I need to do a better job of adjusting my technique to the water I’m fishing, and my preferred style of working the river upstream just wasn’t going to work on the McCloud. But, it really doesn’t help when I’m not catching anything after hours and hours of fishing in the heat. At about 2 p.m., after starting at 9 a.m., I got frustrated and packed it in.
It was slow (what else is new) and even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure how impressed I am. The kiosk at the camp had a survey form where anglers must report their catches. I wish I’d taken a picture of it because there were a few days of records on the form that I could see, and the average catch was an eight inch rainbow trout, with very few 12s and 15s mixed in. In my very humble opinion, those numbers are certainly not worth the hassle of the drive, the reservation system, etc. I hate to pull the “my local water is the best” card, but I can easily catch double-digit numbers of 12 inch trout on the Logan River any day of the week and often multiple 15+ inch fish. When going to a place like the McCloud, I’m looking for big fish (17 inch plus) and lots of them. In sum, I’m just not convinced the fishing on the lower McCloud lives up to its reputation. I look forward to your emails telling me how wrong I am.
I apologize for the lack of pictures. I was planning on being out all day and wanted to lighten my pack, so I left my camera in the car. I used my phone to take one picture of the river. Here it is:
This isn’t high water?