American River Report
(or Ken gets Speyed)
by Ken Lindsay

 

On June 18th & 19th I traveled to Northern California to attend a special event for fly fishing dealers put together by Outdoor Specialty Products, our Sage, Redington and Rio representatives. The idea was to get dealers up to speed on Spey casting and all of the various lines and combinations of lines that are used in this branch of the sport. I have been interested in Spey casting for some time and was eager to get a chance to learn more about it under the guidance of some of the masters in the sport. Simon Gawesworth, Rio’s resident Spey guru, Chris Anderson, Sage’s national sales manager and Bill Lowe who heads up the Sage casting schools in California and also guides on the American River were our instructors for the day. They were joined by John Sherman and Darren Elmore from OSP and Jim Zeck from Hendrix Outdoors who were also available with helpful tips and suggestions.

Since I was going to be flying up the day before I made arrangements with a friend of John Sherman, to fish the American River on Monday evening. Charlie Bisharat is a striped bass fanatic. He pursues stripers almost to the exclusion of all other species. He asked sympathetically at one point if I was “just a trout fisherman”. He figures he would rather fish for fish that can eat trout or shad or anything else that swims in the “his” river.

Charlie picked me up at my hotel in Rancho Cordova around 4 pm and we drove the short distance to the take out point. We picked up a shuttle driver and headed up-river a few miles to launch the boat and as we traveled Charlie filled me in on the details of the park that runs the 23 mile length of the river from the Nimbus Dam to Discovery Park on the Sacramento River. As you can see in this link to a map of the park there are lots of places where you can access the river and launch a boat. This is a fantastic resource and to have something like this next to a large city like Sacramento is really a wonderful thing. The American has resident trout, steelhead, shad, salmon, carp, smallmouth and, of course, stripers so there is something to fish for year round and almost at the doorstep of the state capitol. In addition, the park is an avenue for wildlife and we saw deer, turkey, beaver, all kinds of ducks and geese and countless songbirds. A truly special place.

Before we got underway Charlie showed me some of his unique flies that he uses to fool big stripers. He was searching for a way to get a big enough fly to interest the big stripers but still have something that was relatively easy to cast.

“Charlies Airhead” is the product of much innovation, trial and error. The fly has a huge silhouette, pushes a lot of water and is still very lightweight and castable. It is similar in appearance to Bob Popovic’s Siliclone but it is hollow to reduce weight and improve castability. Fished on a floating line it can be used as a topwater bait similar to the Zara Spook used by conventional bass anglers and fished on a sinking line it has a neutral buoyancy that allows it to be fished fast or slow. These are some truly innovative and exciting patterns and I immediately saw applications in our local and Baja saltwater fishing. Pyramid stripers would be all over some of these flies as would largemouth and even big browns and rainbows.

We pushed off the beach and Charlie manned the oars coaching me as we slowly made our way downstream. I was casting an 8wt Sage TCR rod with a Rio Outbound integrated type 8 sinking shooting head to get down in the swift currents of the American. There were other anglers along the banks of the river trying their luck for the shad which were beginning to run up the river but we saw only a few catching some of the smaller males. Charlie said that the shad were late this year and that the bigger females were not in the river yet.
About an hour into the float we had not connected but Charlie was excited as we approached a swift, deep (10’-15’) run with slower water on each side. “Cast slightly upstream and let the fly soak and swim below the boat before you start to retrieve.” About three casts into the run I was slammed hard by a strong fish. It fought in typical bulldog style and I thought I had a much bigger fish on than what I actually landed.

The stripers obviously use the heavier currents of the river to their advantage and feel like a much bigger fish. Charlie was tickled that I had caught one and he rowed us back up to the top of the run to give it another try.

A few casts later I was hammered again and this time by a slightly larger fish. Some fun! We continued our float and about 45 minutes later in another deep slot I hooked up again and landed another tough striper of about the same size. We were running out of light and as we came to some slower water we began to see small male shad, about 12” long, jumping out of the water and, occasionally, behind them the huge swirls of feeding stripers. Unfortunately we could not interest them in any of our offerings. Soon it was dark and the stars were shining in a warm cloudless sky. A fun evening and great fishing with a new friend.

After breakfast next morning I drove back to the river to meet up with the guys from OSP to begin our Spey class. There were about 25 dealers, or folks who worked for dealers, there to either learn to Spey cast or improve their skills. After first taking us through the different products available Simon and the crew then led us down to the river to give us a demo of how it was done and then broke us out into groups depending on skill levels.

It was a demanding day. I can now relate to how awkward and clumsy you can feel when you first learn to cast. I wrapped that Spey line around my head a couple of times but by the end of the day I had mastered some basic casts and was totally hooked on this elegant and efficient casting method. All of the instructors were helpful, patient and all offered great insights in to this really interesting casting style. I will have to practice and have some more lessons before I feel truly comfortable using the two handed rods but I also see some techniques that will help in casting my single handed rod too.

If you haven’t tried Spey casting I urge you to give it a go. Most weekends you can find avid anglers practicing at the Pasadena or Long Beach casting ponds and both of these clubs offer instruction if you are a member. I am in the process of putting some Spey classes together through the shop and I will let you know when they are and who the instructor will be.

Contact Ken Lindsay
(818) 785-7306
ken@fsflyfishing.com