Our first Golden Trout excursion this year started out on a a pleasant Thursday morning in the end of April, weather was beautiful. I and three friends drove up in separate cars and maintained good social distancing, we didn’t see anyone else in a 10 mile radius! Arriving at our destination, we rigged up and headed down to the water. Conditions were pretty close to perfect and I had high hope this would be a perfect day of fishing!! (little did I know how perfect)

The fish were hungry!! and taking a variety of Dries and Tenkara Flies, I started out with my Snowbee Prestige G-XS 1wt rod (that I helped design!). For the first 3 hours I caught a fair amount of fish on just dry flies, everyone was having good luck with the dries.

After the sun got high in the sky and the fish were more hesitant to rise to the surface, I switched to a Tenkara Rod (Dragontail Tenkara wanted to me to try out one of their newer rods, the Mizuchi, this was my first chance to use it, it fished very nicely, I was impressed!). With a Utah Killer bug tied on I proceeded for the next 5 hours to bring in more fish (let alone Golden Trout!) than I ever have in one day.

We spent 8 hours or so fishing, it was a very productive day. Everyone caught many Goldens, I caught my all time best record, 251 Goldens in one day!!! The fish were all stunning! Nothing nicer than a California Golden in its full color glory. On a side note, many creeks in the Golden Trout Wilderness completely dried up in sections during the recent bad drought we had in California 4-5 years ago, it’s nice to see that some of them have completely recovered in the past 3 years.

We were all very happy with the great day of fishing and vowed to return soon. A very successful day of fishing indeed!!

IF you would like to catch your first (or 100th) Golden Trout, I do offer Golden Trout Excursions to different areas of Golden Trout Wilderness for all 3 species of Golden Trout in their native locals. If you’re working on your California Heritage Trout Award, I can help! Drop me a email at: frank@goldentroutdude.com if you would like more information. Cheers!!