A couple weeks ago the South Fork Eel started to drop into shape which drew quite the crowd. In fact, I have never seen that many drift boats and bank fishermen since I started to fish the Eel River. Lots of high spirits the first few days of fishable water with the anticipation and expectation of fish in the system being high. But, with perfect water conditions there was a huge lack of fish. I have been lucky enough to find fish on a daily basis but most boats are coming up with one, or none. Late January is usually a little early in my opinion to be catching spent fish, but there were a few around. We also had a very large set of storms early on so one of two things happened. Either a big push of fish shot up and spawned and are headed back out, or we are in between runs. There are still bright fish to be had, but not nearly the amount that you would expect to see late January and early February. Although that is the story of the entire CA and Southern OR coast. The big question is, where are the fish? Sure we are getting a trickle of Steelhead but the numbers just aren’t there.
The Russian River started dropping into shape last week and there was a number of boats that went down and all drew blanks. There were reports of some bankies catching fish but still very slow. A push of fish came through right before the recent blow out but still nothing to be ranting and raving about. The hatchery numbers are still way down and supposedly the Mad River Hatchery is discussing shutting down for the remainder of the season due to no returns of fish. So I say again, where are the fish? There are many causes of the decline in Steelhead populations from the ocean conditions, water management, consecutive drought years, predation, decline in smolt productions at hatcheries, scheduled releases of smolts, etc. The list goes on.
That being said, we have had a recent rise in rivers which will really set the stage for the month of February and early March. Will they come? That’s the question we are all waiting for to be answered. Are there fish around? Yes, there are fish to be had but the time and effort is required.
Redwood Fishing Adventures 