Trinity Lake is 101ft. below the over flow and 59.6% of capacity.
Average inflow to the lake for the week is 32cfs.
965cfs is being released to the Sacramento River.
Trinity River @ Lewiston is 472cfs & water temp is 48, air 46 @ 10:00am today.

Douglas City is 2.2ft. @ 468cfs, water temps 48.2, air 53. Helena / North Fork is 9.3ft. @ 458cfs, water temps 49.5, air 51 degrees. Cedar Flat is 3ft. @ 519cfs. Willow Creek est. @ 573cfs & water about 52, air 48. Hoopa is 11.5ft. @ 750cfs water 56 degrees.

Klamath River releases at Iron Gate are 1,330cfs. Seiad Valley is 2.6ft. @ 1,590cfs. Happy Camp est. @ 1,633cfs.

Somes Bar est. @ 1,810cfs. Orleans is 3.7ft. @ 1,090cfs. Mouth of Trinity @ Klamath 2,840cfs water 57degrees.

Klamath @ 101 8.4ft. @ 2,590cfs.

Last weeks temperatures for the Trinity Valley were 70/39 with scattered showers and some rain Friday for 0.6 of an inch. Next weeks forecast is for 743/40 degrees and some more scattered showers for Tuesday and rain Thursday and Friday. With the temperature drops and more rain the fishing should really improve over the next week or so.

The mouth of the Klamath is still partially blocked by a sand bar and the fish are only able to get in during high tides. This is the last I heard and it is presenting a serious problem for the fishermen in the upper parts of the rivers.

The Willow Creek weir counts for the week of Sept 24 shows 208 Chinook for the week, which is 90% of last year at this same time. It also shows that the Steelhead count was up from the previous week to 189, of which 164 (86%) were hatchery fish. We are about 50% ahead of the count for Steelhead for this time last year until this week. This past week saw Mon 100+, Tue 100+, Wed 250, Thur 300+, Fri 250+ STEELHEAD go through the Willow Creek weir. I predict that we will break last year's return of hatchery Steelhead return, which was 33,000. If we were to surpass last years return we could make a new record for return of Steelhead since the dam was put in. NOAA would be hard pressed to claim that Klamath River basin and the KMZ Steelhead are an endangered species. Salmon fishing has been hard the last few weeks due to the mouth of the Klamath being blocked by a sand bar but when the mouth does open we are going to see one of the largest run of Fall Chinook head up the rivers that we have ever seen in years. At the present time the Lower Klamath harvested just over %0% of their IN-River Quota. The upper section of the Klamath/Trinity isn't even close to catching their allotted quota of Fall Chinook.

This past weekend the upper Trinity has been hammered with fishermen. I saw lots of nice adult Steelies being landed. The fly fishers have been really doing a great job of Catch and Release from what I witnessed. I was out Tuesday and Thursday of last week and my customers were able to hook four and land two adults for our efforts. The Del Loma RV Park patrons are complaining about not being able to catch very many salmon but are catching plenty of Steelhead. The problem is that the regulations state that you can only have one hatchery Steelhead in possession. This presents a problem that I hope to see rectified next year when the new fishing regulations are made.

The Mid-Klamath around Weitchpec is seeing Fall Chinook in spurts. I believe this is due to the mouth being blocked by the sand bar and the fish only coming in on a high tide. The word is that what salmon they do catch are dime bright and fight like the devil. There is also a terrible algae bloom on the Klamath that is hampering the fish from going much above Orleans/ Somes Bar stretch of the Klamath. I have no idea of how this affects the fish but I would imagine that it does have some effect on how the fish move up the river. As to date we have not seen or caught any Klamath Salmon in the Trinity because of the algae but it could possibly make at least a few turn up the Trinity just to get away from the algae. Lets hope that is not the case and that the cooler weather and rain will help clear up the Klamath and that fishing for salmon improves. Until next time ----------

Websites: MyOutdoorBuddy.com, Willowcreekchamber.com,
from Willow Creek, CA Phone 530-629-3554, E-mail yen2fish@yahoo.com