Lost Sierra Fishing Report Jan 2025
Sunny Days, Big Brown Trout, and Fun Floats!
Alex came to fish the Middle Fork Feather and I got him on an Epic Brown!
The Fly Fishing in January was off the charts! We fished over 20 days in January and caught countless fish on streamers. Float trips, walk and wade, exploring new water, and fishing with great clients and friends. A perfect way to kick off the new year!
We are a tight-knit team at Lost Sierra Fly Guides, and we are stoked to get you on the water!
The weather pattern was a high-pressure system with warm, sunny days and cold nights. The pattern that emerged was hungry fish during the warmest parts of the day. There were weeks where we fished 5 days in a row and caught countless fish on streamers. Wooly buggers and poachers were working on the Middle Fork Feather while big attractor flies were working on both the Middle Fork and the Spanish Creek.
The fish were moving around and hard to target in the same spots as in previous days. Hard work and looking for the fish were the keys to our success—but that has always been the key to our success!
We have some great client trips, including double-ups on the oar rafts, spay rod swinging adventures, and lots of fish in the net! I love floating clients and covering water in the winter months. However, associate guide “Z” also got the job done on a walk and Wade trip, putting multiple fish in the net for his group. We had some epic days on the river, as usual!
There was nothing new in January; we had our best fish on streamers and on days when we put in the time and hard work to cover lots of water and find the fish. We usually float on the oar rafts to cover water, keeping us high and dry and able to present flies well in the frog water. Being the only “local guides” that float The Middle Fork Feather River, we have it dialed and are always stoked to share with you our best floats!
We targeted the warmer days and even had some great fish on the colder days with clients in town. We work hard to find the fish and share that experience with our clients!
As I write this blog, we are in our 2nd Atmospheric River to pound our area. These events have been mostly rain, so the river is blown out, and we have been pushing our trips back a few weeks, waiting for the river to settle back down and reshuffle the deck! I love fishing the river after big changes; it moves the fish around, and we get a whole new set of challenges. These changes bring the big fish out again, and now is the time to start considering getting on the river at the end of February!! I can’t wait!!
What’s New - Welcome Jordan to The Lost Sierra Fly Guide Team!
Beyond the phenomenal fishing, January brought two exciting highlights. First, we welcomed Jordan to our guide team. Jordan is not only an exceptional fly fisherman but also a humble, genuine person who fits right into our tight-knit crew. We all live by the same motto: work hard, do good, and good things will come.
Jordan will be expanding our services to include lake fly fishing on Lake Davis and Frenchman Lake starting this spring and early summer. We’re thrilled to cover more water and fill the gap for fly fishing guides on these Trophy Trout Lakes in Plumas County. Stay tuned for updates on our upcoming lake adventures—we’re building out our fleet of personal watercraft and can’t wait to get you out there to chase some massive Rainbow and Brown Trout on the fly!
Jordan with a nice brown trout, stripping streamers!
Steelhead Trip to The Smith River
We had the Steelhead bug this year, so we decided to head over to the Smith River and try our luck at Coastal Steelhead. Given the high pressure that sat on Northern California for a month, my hopes of connecting with a coastal Stellie were low, but I figured the adventure would be memorable, and it was! On my rafting bucket list was to float the Smith around the Jedediah State Park. We floated for two days, putting in at the Forks and floating down to Ruby Van Deventer Park.
We saw dozens of fish holding in the shallow riffles, waiting to move upstream, but we did not have the luck to hook one. We camped for three nights at the State Park and had a blast!
