We left the clean water in our wake and with fear and trepidation faced the unknown downstream section of the Little Stinking. Water visibility was about 12″ so we had a bandolier of flashy things to throw.

The weather was just a bit more cooperative, I had replaced the waders with the old guide moks, allowing me to go in about 4″ of water before shipping any inboard. One lone osprey kept me company and I wondered if the “one meal a month” restriction held for him as well.

I opted for a Bead Head Pheasant Tail with a hint of pearl flashabou figuring anything serious about eating would see that even in a cloud of Selenium. It’s one of the good things about Brownlining, desperate and hungry fish sure make you seem like a genius.

I worked structure and shadow, quartering downstream – letting the fly swing through the bulk of the stream, following with a little staccato retrieve on my side of the bank. I was attempting to be more selective, figuring the Smallmouth would hang near the structure offered. I was alert for Carp, but with the water as murky as it was, nothing was visible.

Pikeminnow just love snot out of bead head flys. They were about a 2:1 advantage over the bass, I’m hesitant to ascribe anything to that statistic, as they may just be more aggressive than bass. OK, dumber than bass, hard to imagine anything could be more aggressive, other than a high schooler on prom night…

After I got away from the road and the Paintball bunkers, the stream got pastoral, no trash, weeds and riffles with overhanging willows. I found evidence of other fishermen, but all of it looked pretty old, nothing from this season.

I found some really nice deep spots, small abrupt dropoffs that had developed behind trees, big enough to hold fish, but not big enough to hold more than a couple.

I got a nice strike retrieving a nymph under the overhanging willow branches, slipped another cast into the same slot and stuck a nice Pikeminnow, likely the biggest fish landed to date.

Wound up with three fish over 10″, which made my day. Heat forced me off the water by 11AM.

The bad news is that the Carp were nowhere to be seen, having covered about 4 miles of creek on foot, I have seen them only in one spot, a deep pool by the bridge. It may be there isn’t enough oxygen to support them anywhere else, given the temperatures and low water flows of August.

Then again, most of this creek is a loose gravel bottom, where the bridge area is mud, either way I have my work cut out for me.

Tags: Cache creek, Sacramento Pikeminnow, Smallmouth Bass, fly fishing, Yolo County