Low and clear water makes for tough fishing

I have been out a few times since my last post with out much luck. The low and clear water conditions have made it extremely difficult to catch steelhead and I haven’t seen any smallmouth for a few weeks now. The guy at the local fly shop says this is a great time of year to catch BIG bass, so I’m sure they are still biting for now. In fact, he suggested I forget about steelhead yesterday, since it was 70 degrees, and head up river in search of big smallies. I had to be in a town on the lower section of the river for work, so I headed to the closest park afterward and fished for both smallies and steelhead. The nice thing about the low water is that you get to see the bottom contour and find good holding locations for later in the steelhead season. The only thing I managed to catch yesterday was sucker fish; at least I didn’t go home skunked! It was one of the nicest days we have had in October making it a pleasure just to be outside. The only thing I caught when I was out on Sunday evening was a beautiful sunset. Friday when I was out with a buddy, it was raining lightly all day. Not enough to bring the rivers up, just enough to make it cold and wet. The water was still very low. I managed to hookup with a steelhead and didn’t land it. My buddy didn’t have any luck at all. The fishing has been tough since we haven’t had much rain or the rain we had wasn’t enough to make an impact. I’m ready to start doing the rain dance… The five day forecast is calling for rain on at least three of those days and chances of rain on the other two. I hope the forecast holds up.