I have fished the river over the past week from both Altmar to Pineville and Pineville to 2A. There are steelhead in good numbers through out both these areas. Not big numbers, but good numbers. Most of the fish we have hit are chrome, fresh fish. It has been nice also to find very little pressure on the river (the areas I fish with clients) which make it nice. This will change. Within the next week or two as the numbers if steelhead increase and word gets around, the river will become crowded, especially the upper areas around Altmar and Pineville.
Finding steelhead right now is easy, fish the fastwater and pockets with good current. The last few outings have produced action using orange egg sacs and egg pattern flies like Sucker Spawn, Glo- bugs or Nuke eggs.
One problem on going right now is the leaf hatch that has made it near to impossible, at times, to get through a drift. There are still a lot of leaves on the trees around the river yet to fall. We need a couple days of high wind and hard rains.
The river is flowing at 335cfs release and at the Pineville gauge the reading is 489cfs as I post this. If we get no substantial rain this will continue to drop.
The salmon have disappeared very fast over the last week. Any left are either late runners or on death's door.
I'll be on the river steady over the next few months so will keep you posted.
Tight lines.
