We are now going into the Holiday season so I hope all you fishers out there have been good and placed your orders with Santa. Wishing all a good Holiday Season as well as a good winter fishing season. The International Sportsman Exhibit is coming to Sacramento January 10-13, 2013 so those of you who live in Northern Cal might want to mark the dates in your calendar and check out some of the new fishing and hunting stuff. 

The rains blew out the Trinity last week, a week ago Friday. The upper section from Lewiston to Douglas City started to clear up Friday and Saturday as the streams started to drop. At the present time most of the streams have peaked out and are on the down side. From Douglas City to Junction City the river is becoming more fishable as you read this. The problem is that this coming week we are expecting showers near the weekend. Wednesday the weather forecast shows possible showers with the possibility of some snow in the higher elevations along the river. The good part is that these last rains of 2.5in started more Iron Heads to move up river as more came into the lower river.  It is starting to get colder as we get closer to Christmas but the water is staying pretty consistent around 45 to 48 degrees.    

           
I will be trying to meet with some Hoopa Council members to see if there can be some way to allow sports fishermen to have access to the river on the Reservation as many fly fishers love to fly fish down there and that helps our economy for the small communities on the Lower Trinity. Before the land at Tish Tang was returned to the Hoopa Tribe many fishermen would fish this area and go to Hoopa for lunch then fish down behind the shopping center. My hopes are that can once again happen some time in the coming year. 

The results of this years’ salmon return is starting to be compiled so come January please be sure to send in your salmon and steelhead report cards so that DFG can get a better and more accurate count of fish harvested. From what I have seen already it looks like we could have a good season in 2013. No we did not reach the predicted estimates of 380,000 Chinook salmon reach the mouth of the Klamath this season but we did come close. That means that the biologists were not to far off in their estimates of how many Chinook would return to the Klamath basin. The good news was that it looks like the returns of Chinook to the Sacrament River were under estimated. It will be interesting to see what the actual returns were. 

Fishing:

As I stated up above the rains pretty much closed fishing down the last weekend but the upper part of the Trinity did come back into fishable condition fast. I heard that Douglas City and Junction City were fishable by the end of the week. I did get an email stating that there was a LOT of drift boats in the upper part of the river. That sometimes becomes a problem when it rains on the Trinity. I hope every one was courteous and not fish over the other person. I know this happens some times and it is the Trinity River Guides Association intentions to try and curb this type of action on the river. 
Fishing for the most part on the lower section was a non event because of the high water. If we don’t see a lot of rain in the coming storm, the Hawkins Bar / Willow Creek area should become fishable by the weekend. Throwing hardware and night crawlers should get you some good results. 
 

The Mid-Klamath: The Mid-Klamath is really having high flows at this time so the best bet is the Upper Klamath above I-5.

Trinity River Flows and conditions: 

Trinity Lake is 36.4ft (+4.6ft decrease) below the overflow and 75.5% of capacity (5.5% decreases) at 1:00PM today. 
Inflow to the lake is 2,249cfs and dam releases are 524cfs to Lewiston Lake with 202cfs going to Whiskeytown Lake and then on to the Sacramento River at Keswick.     

Trinity River: Lewiston Dam releases are 322cfs water temps 46, air is 36 degrees. Limekiln Gulch is 5ft at 440cfs. Douglas City is 2.3ft at 592cfs, water temps 46, air is 36. Junction City is 2.3ft at 889cfs.  Helena is 10.5ft at 1,010cfs with water at 44.9. Cedar Flat is 5.9ft at 2,060cfs. Willow Creek is estimated at 3,470cfs, air 44, and water 00. Hoopa is 16.5ft at 6,140cfs, water temps 45 degrees. Mouth of the Trinity at the Klamath is 16.4K cfs.

Klamath: Iron Gate Dam releases are 1,000cfs. Seiad Valley is 4.2ft at 3,080cfs. Happy Camp estimated at 3,742cfs. Somes Bar estimated at 7.6K cfs. Orleans is 8.2ft at 10.3K cfs. Klamath at 101 is 15ft at 23.8 cfs & water temps of 46.4 degrees. Smith River is 9.9ft at 5,610 cfs.

Temperatures in the Valley last week were 57/43 degrees with 2.5 inches of rain, total to date 24.3 inches. The Weather in the valley next week is expected to be 47/31 degrees with possible showers and maybe some snow.
Mon/sun, Tue/partly cloudy, Wed/showers-possible snow, Thu/cloudy with sun, Fri-Sat-Sun/showers.