The day started off with the weather being a little cool.\u00a0 We suited up with waders and rain jackets.\u00a0\u00a0 Mikey Weir, Grady Garlough are guides with Grady guiding on the MFA for over 20 years.\u00a0\u00a0 He really knows the river very well.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We launched at the lake below the tunnel and had a shuttle driver take the truck to the pickup point down at Ruck A chucky.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little over 12 mile float. (*pics below)<\/p>\n
We started fishing the lake throwing white streamers and was amazed at the number of fish following the streamers.\u00a0 Mikey was using an 8 weight rod with a floating line so he could throw a larger streamer.\u00a0 My 5 weight wasn\u2019t handling the large streamer very well.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Even my 5 weight switch didn\u2019t handle the large streamers well.\u00a0\u00a0 The fish were everywhere, both sides of the mouth, along the high wall on the left as you leave the boat storage area, even along the shore where we launched,\u00a0 \u00a0It was hard leaving the lake at 10:30 with the action so good.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t wait to get back to the lake with my float tube and a heavier rod with a floating line.\u00a0\u00a0 Be sure to have 6\u2019 to 8\u2019 of 15# fluorocarbon.\u00a0 The fish notice the floating line at shorter leader lengths and shy away from the fly.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had on a Teeny 200 sinking line that didn\u2019t work as well as the fish were feeding\u00a0 a foot or two below the top.<\/p>\n
The flow was high and moving fast at around 2000 CFS.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I tried nymphing but it was too fast and difficult to see a hit with the bubbling water.\u00a0\u00a0 We often saw fish chasing the streamers throughout the trip but with the fast water couldn\u2019t go back for them.<\/p>\n
Coming through the two deep pools at Gray Eagle Bar was quite a ride and it was difficult even distinguishing one pool from the other as they both seem to be one big run.\u00a0 As we pulled over into slower water at the bottom of the lower pool, Mikey was fighting a huge brown.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We lost a lot of fish due to fast currents throughout the trip.\ufeff\ufeff<\/p>\n
\ufeffThis trip was not for beginners.\u00a0 Perhaps at a lower flow, but I had my hands full with the fast moving water and bouncing waves.\u00a0\u00a0 There were areas that were flat and slower where fish were rising.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was a pain to switch rods as everything had to be tied down securely with the fast rough water.\u00a0 Kanaka Falls is a class 4 rapid 6\u2019 fall.\u00a0\u00a0 This is probably the most difficult to run.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Orange wall is also a challenge.\u00a0 Clearly at these flows it would not be save for an inexperience person to float down the river in anything.\u00a0\u00a0 Wearing a helmet and professional life vest was required.<\/p>\n
We caught nice fish all the way to Fords Bar where the river got wide and slower.\u00a0 This was more my style of fishing although by now it was 4:00 and I was tired.\u00a0 So I lit up one of my Horseshoe Bar Preserve custom blend cigars and enjoyed the scenery.\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing like float down an incredibly beautiful rive smoking a cigar and sipping a cool beer.\u00a0 By now the weather had warmed and we were able to remove our helmets and vests and a few layers of cloths.\u00a0\u00a0 It will be much more fun with warmer weather.\u00a0\u00a0 I would have wet waded if it were warmer.<\/p>\n
As soon a we start seeing a reasonable flow we will put together some trips.<\/p>\n
Tom<\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The day started off with the weather being a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private-trout-preserve","tag-float-trip-american-river"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":774,"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horseshoebarpreserve.com\/fly-fishing-american-river\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}