Sacramento Rainbows With A Helping Of Turkey On The Side!   By: Cal Kellogg May 6, 2008 More Articles by Cal

I just got back from a super exciting action packed fishing adventure, but the funny thing is that it didn’t really start off as a fishing trip at all.

One of my passions is spring turkey hunting and I seldom miss an opportunity to get out into the spring woods. When I found out that Jason Thatcher of All River Fishing is also an avid turkey caller, it didn’t take long for us to plan a trip.

I know several good spots up in the Lassen National forest that typically hold a good concentration of birds. Since Jason lives in Red Bluff, this seemed to be a logical destination for our hunt. “If we luck out and get our gobblers, we’ll take my drift boat out on the Sacramento and catch a bunch of trout. The fishing has been off the hook lately,” Jason told me as we made final preparations.

Without going into great detail, (this is a fishing magazine after all!) as darkness gave way to the milky light of dawn on April 2, Jason and I were fully camouflaged and setting about 15 yards apart near the crest of a ridge over looking a small canyon.

At that moment you could have cut the tension with the proverbial knife! For the non-turkey hunters out there, the basic strategy is to find turkeys on the roost using a “shock call”. Spring gobblers will gobble at all sorts of noises ranging from sonic booms to slamming car doors to the squawks of a bad manner crow or the scream of a hawk.

Once you get one to gobble, you mark that position and move into close proximity of the birds before they fly down. You then make some sweet hen sounds. When that lovesick tom flies down and struts within range you convert him into a hearty turkey dinner.

Well it just so happens the second time I blew my coyote howler that morning we got an immediate answer. After scurrying into position on the ridge we settle in and made a few hen sounds just to let the Romeo know we were there. He responded with several gobbles and then at long last we heard wing beats.

Minutes later not one, but two handsome gobblers marched right into our laps. Two well placed shots brought our picture perfect hunt to a conclusion in less than 30 minutes! After shaking hands and taking a mess of photos, Jason looked at me and asked, “Breakfast? Then trout fishing?” Clearly this day was going to be high on my list of memorable outdoor adventures!

Two hours later, with breakfast over and our birds cleaned, wrapped and in Jason’s refrigerator, we hitched up Jason’s drift boat and Jason, his girlfriend Holly and I were off in hopes of hammering some wild Sacramento River rainbows on fly tackle.

Since the trout fishing had been so consistent, we planned on only making a short drift above the Barge Hole. “I think we can catch all the trout we want on a 2 or 3 hour drift,” Jason told me as we prepared the boat. After dropping my truck off on a gravel bar just below the Barge Hole we dropped the drift boat in the water at the Jellies Ferry ramp and Jason pulled us out into the current with the oars.

I was positioned in the front of the boat (It’s good to be a writer!) and Holly was in the back. Jason handed us a pair of G-Loomis fly rods that were armed with identical leaders, which Jason designed himself.

Coming down the leader from the rod tip, the first thing attached to the line is a big fluffy strike indicator. Several feet below that there were a pair of large stonefly nymph imitations rigged about a foot apart. A foot below the bottom stonefly a size 14 mayfly nymph was attached and below that there was a single split shot attached to the bottom of the leader. The rig is basically the fly angler’s answer to the dropshot rig often employed by black bass anglers.

“Wow I can’t believe we haven’t had a bite yet,” Jason complained after we’d been fishing for a total of about 3 minutes. Now that’s the kind of comment you like to hear on a guided fishing trip!

We probably hadn’t gone another 50 feet when my indicator dove beneath the surface near a submerged log. I set the hook and felt the fish struggle for a moment before the hook pulled free. I didn’t land the trout, but at least we’d broken the ice.

Minutes later I hooked a second fish, an awesome 1.5 pounder that I managed to get to the net. After that Holly and I were on fire, nailing fish after fish as Jason controlled the boat with the oars and netted our trout.

Holly is a 20 some year old college student but you can’t let that fool you. When it comes to fly fishing she has top notch skills and didn’t seem handicapped in the least while fishing from the backseat.

We were about halfway through with the drift when we got a double hookup. My rainbow was big, but Holly’s was massive. I took me a few minutes to get my fish to the net, yet once we had mine safely back into the water, Holly’s fish was still going strong.

When she’d first hooked the trout it swam up toward the boat and we’d caught sight of it before it really started to fight. The question wasn’t whether it was over 4 pounds, but rather how much over 4 pounds!

After tense minutes with the trout alternating between surging away on bull dogging runs and lurking along the bottom beneath the boat, it finally gave up and came to the surface. I’ve seen a lot of trout I my travels, but I’d have to say that Holly’s wild rainbow was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. It colors were breath taking and its physique was impressive.

After snapping off a few photos, we put the fish back into the water in the net and got a rough measurement. The trout was 21 inches long and had a girth of 14 inches, but we probably didn’t have the tape around the thickest part of the it’s body. According to Jason’s length/girth/weight conversion chart the rainbow was somewhere between 5 and 6 pounds. It was an amazing rainbow, caught on a day when more than 15 awesome trout came to the boat.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. The Sacramento River below Redding boasts some of the very best trout fishing in the Western United States. I can hear the murmurs out there, “What about the Yellowstone Country?” I’ve fished in Montana and Wyoming. The trout fishing there is great, but I can say with total confidence that the upper reaches of the lower Sacramento are every bit as good and we don’t need to drive 1,000 miles to get there.