USA Trout Fishing by Ron Giles What is the biggest difference between fishing in USA and fishing at home – don’t strike so hard! The reason being that a normal NZ lifting of the rod will propel the miniscule trout deep into the bushes behind you. Which is not good for the health of the trout as they are not adapted to slithering around on the forest floor. I learned this elementary lesson when fishing the famous McCloud River in Northern California a few weeks ago. I was being hosted by part time guide, Ron Rabun who I had met at the presentation I gave to his Sacramento flyfishing club. Ron very kindly offered me a couple of day’s fishing at his weekend house at Dunsmuir, about four hour’s drive north of Sacramento. The plan was to fish the lower McCloud River in the morning, nymphing for the distinctive red-striped rainbows unique to that river. Shipments of rainbows from this river were sent to New Zealand in the 1890’s and released in various parts of the North Island. The fish we caught did not look much like our NZ rainbows, as they were a short, chunky fish with quite unusual black spots along the upper body. The red stripe that distinguishes this strain from other American rainbows was narrower and more intense than normally found in NZ rainbows. However as our rainbows came from a variety of sources in North America, it is possible these elements have been muted over the years. In the afternoon we ventured to the upper McCloud, a small stream that runs into a large glacial lake that is the source of the lower river. Ron suggested I put on a dry fly and use a dapping technique. It was easy to reach over the faster water and drift the fly down the slower water on the far edge. Ron wanted me to keep the line completely off the water with just the fly bobbing along in the gentle current. My first drift had not gone halfway down the pool when the fly disappeared in a swirl. I raised the rod firmly – to see the 3 inch long trout catapulted into the trees behind me. An embarrassed silence prevailed for half a minute before Ron quietly suggested I only needed to flick the rod tip up a couple of inches to set the hook. The next strike was marginally better and the 4 inch trout flew only about 6 feet before landing at my feet. The fish was a perfect miniature of the red-striped rainbows we had been catching in the lower river. From then on, I managed to restrain my forceful striking but found it hard to set the hook quickly enough with the short upward motion. In one hundred yards, I would have had 30 strikes from these small fish but only managed to hook 10 or so. The biggest fish came from a conventional upstream cast into a bigger pool. It took the Parachute Adams halfway down the pool and setting the hook was easier striking from below the fish. An eight inch trout was soon reeled in and Ron advised that was as big as they got in this small river. The next day saw us fishing for slightly larger rainbows on the Sacramento River that flows past Ron’s house. It is a fast-flowing, rocky river that reminded me of the Waipunga River back home. It has a wide variety of rapids and runs as well as a few large pools. It also has a trout population of 5000 trout per mile! The most intriguing thing about these fish was where they lay. Not in the slower, secondary currents that you would fish back home but right in the middle of the fastest sections of the river. Ron has developed a new fast water nymphing technique for fishing this type of water. It is a sort of high stick or short line nymphing method but he keeps the rod horizontal rather than raising it to control drag as is usual with those techniques. The ‘indicator’ consists of brightly-coloured nylon which is positioned just above the water. If the indicator hesitates, a downstream flick of the rod will set the hook. This unusual striking method took a bit of mastering but after half an hour’s practice, I was catching the ten to twelve inch fish that were average for this water. They were all rainbows and looked very similar to our fish with a more muted red stripe and less distinct spots. I was impressed with the effectiveness of this fast water nymphing technique and felt it could be very useful on some of our faster rivers. It would be brilliant on the Gowan River, in the Nelson Lakes area, with its unrelenting fast flows. An interesting experiment would be to fish the faster sections of some other rivers in NZ, just to see if the fish were indeed holding there. As readers of Catch That Trout – South Island will recall, I once had a magic day pulling big sea-run browns out of a section of rapids on the Hurunui. Even though the fish were not large, the Sacramento was a lovely river to fish, flowing as it does through beautiful mature forest. Despite fishing on the weekend, the fishing pressure was not that high as there were 30 miles of fishable river. A very absorbing two days with two new techniques to try back home – you can’t ask for much more from a fishing weekend.