Tales Of Trout And Treasure In The Sierra

The following appears in the October issue of California Sportsman:

By Cal Kellogg

When the late-summer sun slipped behind the ridge, light was replaced by shadow. What had been a bright, warm afternoon with a breeze out of the west was giving way to dusk. The air cooled and became still.

This transition marked the beginning of the magical period when stream trout abandon the hiding places they’ve occupied all day to feed on caddisflies and other insects until darkness fully engulfs the stream.

Looking up the canyon toward the rusting remains of a 1920s-era suspension bridge constructed by nameless and long-forgotten miners, I saw the first few caddis of the evening fluttering against the descending thermals and knew the stream’s wild rainbows would be rising soon.

It was time to finish the soda I’d been sipping and stow my prospecting gear, but first I wanted to have a look at the gold I’d scored. I dipped some water into my lucky 10-inch pan, dumped the contents of my suction bottle into it, swirled, tapped, swirled some more, and I was greeted by a glimmering seam of beautiful gold!

I estimated there was probably a half gram of gold in the pan; not a bad total for three hours’ work with just a pan and a few simple hand tools. I wasn’t rich, but with gold selling at $2,500 an ounce the flakes add up quickly.

Ten minutes later, I had all my gear back in the daypack and was stalking upstream in my hip boots with a fly rod in hand. It was time to introduce the trout to a size 12 Elk Hair Caddis!

The first trout was resting in a pocket of nearly still water behind a good-sized rock, with twin runs of bubbling whitewater to either side. The rainbow blitzed the fly as soon as it hit the water and safely spit the counterfeit caddis out just as quickly.

“Concentrate,” I told myself. I was ready when the next rise came six casts later some 20 yards upstream. I saw a slight flash a nanosecond before the trout grabbed the fly with a splash.

A lifetime of fly-fishing instinct took over. The left hand stripped line; the right hand drew the rod tip up, sharply setting the hook, the line came tight and I instantly felt the fury of a pint-sized predator that had never encountered a hook before.

When you’re conditioned to fighting reservoir trout, you forget how strong and savage wild stream trout can be. First, the 10-incher shot skyward with its tail pumping frantically against the air. As soon as it splashed down, it ran downstream and pulled a couple feet of line off the reel.

I turned the rainbow back upstream and intended to lead it into a pocket of still water for a quick release, but the rainbow was having none of it. The fish bolted passed my position, running against the current and made another wild jump in hopes of freeing itself.

As I worked to remove the hook from the rainbow’s mouth, I was struck by the beauty of its heavily speckled green/blue back that gave way to the iridescent pink/purple stripe that was its namesake.

STAKING A CLAIM

With gold for the taking and wild rainbows having never encountered an angler, you are undoubtedly wondering where the action I’ve described took place. Was it in British Columbia? Alaska? The Cascade Range in northern Washington State?

It could have easily taken place in any of those destinations, but it didn’t. I was prospecting and fishing in a small Sierra stream almost in the shadow of the state capital in Sacramento!

Readers of California Sportsman know me as a full-time trout angler and part-time hunter, but few folks know of my other life as an avid gold prospector. When I tell people I’m a prospector I’m often confronted with the same question, “Is there any gold left in California?” Well, California is called the Golden State for good reason. The California “Motherlode” in the central part of the state and the “Gold Country” district to the north represent one of the richest gold-producing regions in the world.

Geologists at the United States Geological Survey estimate that only 20 percent of California’s gold, some 118 million troy ounces, has been extracted. This means there is nearly 500 million ounces of gold waiting to be found by you and me!

And what about trout fishing in California’s gold-producing regions? I first went gold prospecting with my folks in the late 1970s; not long after that I caught my first trout on a fly rod. While I spend a lot of time chasing trout with traditional gear these days, there was a period of about 10 years when I fished exclusively with fly tackle, and I still love battling stream trout on fly gear.

SAMPLING SIERRA STREAMS

The west slope of the Sierra hosts a maze of streams with gold, from big brawling rivers like the American and Yuba to tiny nameless tributaries. Almost all these waterways are home to trout, so strapping a fly rod to my pack when I head out prospecting is a no brainer.

The trout you encounter in the Sierra’s rivers and streams aren’t the big-bellied planters you find in the state’s reservoirs. They are largely wild fish – sleek and rambunctious, with a lineage stretching back to the last ice age. This is particularly true if you get off the beaten path and visit some of the more remote streams draining out of the high country.

Most of these small waterways are seldom visited by people, and when a human does arrive on the scene, it’s usually in the form of a prospector or hunter, so the likelihood of catching trout that have never seen a hook is very real.

If this sort of adventure appeals to you, keep on reading while I unfurl the basics of prospecting and fly fishing where there is gold in the water!

GOLD PANNING

Panning for gold is a simple, easily learned process. Gold is extremely dense and heavy, making it hands down the heaviest element you are likely to encounter in a stream. And it’s the density of gold that makes gold panning possible.

When you put the dirt, gravel and sand you find in a stream along with some gold in a pan, as soon as you liquify the material and shake the pan, the gold sinks to the bottom. All modern plastic pans have a series of riffles along the side of the pan. These riffles give the gold a place to settle as you “pan” the “paydirt” you put into your pan.

I’ll give you a down-and-dirty panning tutorial in a bit, but first let’s consider the tools you need and where you’ll find the aforementioned pay dirt.

To find and capture gold quickly and easily, you only need three things: a plastic gold pan, a crevice tool and a suction bottle.

Gold pans come in a variety of sizes; 14 inches is standard, but I prefer a 10-inch model. While you can process more material with a 14-inch pan, I like the light nimbleness of the smaller pan.

A crevicing tool is simply an instrument to probe into small areas where gold likes to accumulate along the stream bed. You simply use the tool to pull out and scrape up the material you’ll later pan.

Some folks use bent screwdrivers or old butter knives for crevice tools, which work great, or you can spend $10 or so for a professionally made model. I prefer the latter.

The suction bottle is simply a screw-top plastic bottle with an extended straw coming out of it. When you see gold in your pan, you squeeze the bottle, line the straw up with the flake of gold, release your squeeze and shazam: the gold is sucked up and into the bottle, safely captured.

While the density of gold makes the metal “pan-able,” it also causes gold to accumulate in specific areas along the streambed. Due to its density, gold always works its way down through other materials like sand and gravel until it meets a solid barrier. In nature this solid barrier is almost always bedrock.

Bedrock, or country rock, is those big expanses of solid rock you see next to a stream. This is the rock that underlies everything.

FINDING GOLD

When looking for gold, simply locate an expanse of bedrock and look for any cracks or pockets in the rock. When you find one, use your tool to dig out all the material and put it in your pan. When your pan is two-thirds full, it’s time to give it a whirl.

Go to the stream and dip the pan under the water. Use your fingers to work the material to ensure everything is wet. Next, jiggle the pan back and forth for several seconds. This will put any gold in the material on the bottom of the pan. The next step is to tilt the pan 30 degrees or so and move it back and forth in the water while slowly washing lighter material out of the pan. Every 30 seconds or so repeat the jiggling to resettle the gold; think jiggle, wash, jiggle.

When almost all the material has been washed from the pan, scoop up some clean water and swirl your remaining material around. If there was gold in the paydirt, you’ll see it in the pan.

If you want to practice panning, split shot is a good substitute for gold. If you are a visual learner, there are hundreds of gold panning demonstrations on YouTube.

THE TROUT

I know gear anglers are intimidated by the term “fly fishing.” Asking a gear angler to go fly fishing is akin to asking Count Dracula to go sunbathing! If this describes you, I want you to empty your mind, breathe deeply and trust me. Not only is fly fishing easy and super fun, but it’s also a super effective way to catch trout on small streams.

Yes, there are big rivers full of educated trout where fly fishing is really technical. Playing golf at Pebble Beach is difficult and technical; miniature golf? Not so much. Small stream fly fishing is like miniature golf. On a small stream, if you can flip a fly out into the water, you are well on your way to fly-fishing success.

A lot of folks think fly fishing is expensive, and it certainly can be, but I just looked at the Bass Pro Shops website, which features rod, reel and line combos starting at about $40. With that setup, a premade tapered fly leader and a dozen flies, you can catch a bunch of wild rainbows and some bonus browns and brook trout while exploring the small streams flowing down the west slope of the Sierra.

As with gold panning, go to YouTube and watch a few videos that outline basic fly casting, then head outside and get in a bit of practice on your lawn. When it comes to casting distance on small streams, less is more. I seldom have more than 20 feet of line out, including the 7-foot-long leader.

To catch the maximum number of trout, subsurface flies are more effective than dry flies that ride atop the water, but catching the trout up top is way more fun. I carry a small box of subsurface nymphs and subsurface flies with me. But in reality, I do 90 percent of my small stream fishing with dry flies because it’s always way more fun to catch fish on topwater offerings.

On streams where the trout are “educated,” matching the hatch is very important. Small-stream trout are highly aggressive, so I stick with flies that give the trout the impression of a nice juicy meal.

Grasshopper imitations are fun to fish, as are any flies made of deer or elk hair. Hair flies are very buoyant, ride high and dry and are easy to see

Seeing the fly is very important for two reasons. First, you need to make sure it is drifting at the same pace as the current and not dragging. If your fly is dragging, even the class dunce of the trout world won’t hit it. Second, you want to see the strike so you can set the hook immediately.

As soon as Mr. Trout gets the fly in its mouth, the trout will know he’s been duped; it will instantly spit it out. You’ve got to have the mindset of a gunfighter in a 1950s Western. As soon as the trout makes its move, you’ve got to make yours and beat him to the punch. It is amazing just how fast a trout can grab and spit out a fly!

WHERE TO GO?

Just about every small- to medium-sized stream flowing west out of the Sierra features the gold and trout combo. Some have more and bigger gold; the same goes for trout. Some streams have a bunch of 4- to 6-inch trout, but there are plenty of overlooked gems that boot out wild trout averaging 8 to 10 inches, including 18-inch monsters lurking in the shadows.

Your adventure starts with a map of a national forest in your region. Identify a few streams, plan your adventure and let the exploring begin. After a season, you’ll have a short list of spots that produce both trout and gold.

I’ll leave you with two warnings: Gold fever is real and fly fishing is addictive, so if you choose to follow me down this path, both activities could easily turn into lifelong afflictions. That’s because you’ll never find enough gold and you’ll always want more and bigger trout! CS