Trinity Lake is 73ft. below the over flow and 58% of capacity. Average inflow to the lake for the week is 230cfs.

415cfs is being released to the Sacramento River. Trinity River @ Lewiston is 300cfs & water temp is 47.1, air 41 @ 10:00am today. ?ĮDouglas City is 1.9ft. @ 312cfs, water temps 48, air 41. Helena / North Fork is 9.4ft. @ 495cfs, water temps 49, air 43 degrees. Cedar Flat is 4.2ft. @ 1,040cfs. Willow Creek est. @ 1,400cfs & water about 50, air 48. Hoopa is 14.2ft. @ 3,040cfs water 51.

Klamath River releases at Iron Gate are 1,330cfs. Seiad Valley is 2.6ft. @ ? cfs. Happy Camp est. @ 4,410cfs.

Somes Bar est. @ 4,660cfs. Orleans is 6.4ft. @ 6,200cfs. Mouth of Trinity @ Klamath 9.2K cfs water 51 degrees.

Klamath @ 101 9ft. @ 3,600cfs water temps 58 degrees.

Last weeks temperatures for the Trinity Valley were 70/47 with rain and showers for 11.6 inches. Next weeks forecast is for 7866/42 degrees with morning overcast and sunny afternoons. If NOAA is right we should be over the rain for a while. We had so much rain in the last week that the river came up 3ft.

With all of this rain this past week it finally washed out the sand bar down at the mouth of the Klamath and the fish started to come in a steady stream. Also the creel count for the Lower Klamath has yet to reach their allotted quota of 5,300 Fall Chinook salmon. To date the harvest for the Lower Klamath is 3,286 fall Chinook. With the fall run being so late we could have some very good fishing clear up into Thanksgiving. Wouldn't that be great? The Steelhead harvest is still a little low for the Lower Klamath for the amount of adult Steelies that have gone through that section of the river.

The Willow Creek weir counts just keep going up and up and up for Steelhead. Thank goodness the Salmon have started to show. Now we should really have some good fishing. Last weeks counts were even higher that the week before. Oct 8-14 1,327 Steelhead were counted and tagged, of which 1,157 were hatchery fish. The weir also counted 139 Chinook salmon and 29 Coho salmon. These numbers should increase substantially in the next few weeks. Thursday the DFG had to dismantle the weir due to the rain and high water. They should be able to place it back into the river come Monday as the Trinity reached its peak Friday night about midnight. In fact most of the rivers and streams have all reached their peak and started to decrease their flows. According to NOAA River Flow information the Trinity at Hoopa should be back to the normal flows before the storms came in.

This is a "Ripley's' Believe It or Not" True fish story. For past few years the father and son team of Marc and Eldon Brannon, from West Plains, MO have been coming out to book and fish with me every other year. Well two years ago the father Eldon hooked and landed a very nice 27in adult native Steelhead, his first. Well we took a picture for prosperity and released it. Well this year the team booked me for two days this past week and we went on the same drift and almost in the same area the son Marc hooked and landed another Steelhead of the same size, 27 inches native fish, almost the exact same fish in the same place as his father, two years later, also his first Steelhead. Now isn't that something? The sad part of the story is that the river blew out that night and we were not able to continue the great fishing trip they had planed for. That's what I call quality family time.

Up until the rains blew out the rivers fishing was starting to get better each week. I don't know how one can call fishing any better than great, but that is what was happening. Most of the trips I had booked for the weekend and the first part of the week I had to shuffle to this coming weekend when the river should be in fishable condition. With all of the Steelhead that have gone through the weir and now the salmon coming into the Trinity this should be "THE" river to fish. The last several weeks the Trinity has seen a lot of fishing pressure from fishermen, both fly and conventional. Several times while on the river I have had to hold up my drift while we watched a fly fisher land a nice adult steelie. I still say that thee is nothing more majestic than to watch a good fly fisher make a nice long cast and then watch him or her hook up and fight to the landing of a beautiful adult Steelhead.

The Mid Klamath should be fishable by Wednesday or Friday by the latest. Before the rains washed out the fishing last Thursday fishing was really starting to heat up in the Weitchpec area. I know that between there and Orleans that was good for both salmon and Steelhead. The hardware throwers were doing a little better than the fly fishers but both were succeeding at their perfected method of fishing. Now that the rains have subsided, the mouth of the Klamath is open, the rivers are receding and the fish are heading up the river again, fishing should be nothing but great. How far upriver the fish were able to get before the high water is any ones guess but I would imagine that Salmon and Steelhead should be at least up to Somes Bar or Happy Camp. Some thing was wrong with the Seiad Valley gauge and I was unable to get a reading off of it so I am not sure how much the river has receded up there, but all indicators say that it should be fishable in that area. Until next time ----------

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