Fishing Report

On Sunday, Trinity Lake was 79.5 feet below the overflow and at 55.3 percent of capacity.

Many fishermen have been calling to ask about the fires and smoke for the Trinity River. Well, it is an hour-by-hour, day-byday situation because the fire keeps jumping the fire lines and no one can predict that.

Like last Friday, the firefighters were getting a handle on the fire up by Big Bar, and Saturday they notified that it was "mandatory evacuation," as the winds came up and the fire jumped the lines and was heading into the town.

I cannot predict what the weather or the fires will be like come November. Sorry.

Fishing has been fair to good but not hot in the upper Trinity. Most of the guides are boating one to four salmon per trip and the bank fishers are doing about the same. Boaters are using plugs and sardine-wrapped Kwikfish early on and switching to roe later in the morning. Fishing is good from morning daylight to about 9 or 10 a.m., then becomes a hard fish until noon when most of the boaters start to get off the water. The bank fishermen start at daylight and quit about 9, then go home or back to camp, eat lunch, take a nap and start the evening fish about 6 or 7 p.m. until dark. This is about the only way one will make their limit per day.

Remember that the Grays and Burnt Ranch Falls area from Hawkins Bar Bridge up to the Cedar Flat Bridge will close to fishing Labor Day, Sept. 1, so don't get caught fishing there after Aug. 31.

The lower Trinity from Hawkins Bar to Willow Creek is slowing down a bit. But the fishing time is about the same as it is on the upper section of the river, daylight to noon then 6 or 7 p.m. till dark.

Bank fishermen are doing good throwing hardware or bait for the salmon, but are doing better with roe for steelhead.

In Hoopa below the shopping center, fly fishers are starting to get into some halfpounders. These are very fat half-pounders and really put up a good fight. We have a while before the main run of half-pounders really shows up in the lower river.

The Weitchpec area of the Trinity is seeing some early fall Chinook that are very bright and full of life. This tells me that fishing is going to pick up in the next couple of weeks and should be really good after the Labor Day holidays.