Reporting from the wide-open waters of Northern California, let me cut
to the chase on
a couple of points that may be useful to somebody:
-- Did anyone lose a rod, reel and rig on Pit 5 in the past couple of
weeks? I found one, and if you can identify it you can have it back,
albeit in a rather scummy state. Otherwise, my buddy Rick is going
to use it for Washington state dolly varden over Thanksgiving. He needs
to learn to fly fish, but not with one of my rods :)
-- Pit 4 was completely blown out Saturday and Sunday, so if you were
thinking about going there tonight or tomorrow, it might be good to
re-plan for 3 or 5.
-- Don't be thinking that caddis are all over on the Lower Sacramento.
It was good Friday evening and really really good last night.
Now I'll go ahead and ramble :)
Though PB is trying to change his ways so as not to be totally predictable,
he could not resist the last 2005 Pit trip, with stops to wade in Redding. I
expected to be 'egging', but when I got on the water at 4:30 Friday, fish were
already splashing around in the unmistakable caddis-grabbing way. Sure enough,
a few healthy fish grabbed the old tan poopah in a most kind way. Here is a picture
of the longest of those (a hair over 18" by my truth-telling
net):
It was good enough Friday that I hurried back down for Sunday evening to the best
poopah-ing I've ever seen. Is it because the fall hatch is more sparse and I'm not
competing with as many naturals? Over a dozen strikes and 7 or 8 to hand in two
hours is pretty good in my book. No indicator either, so for at least a couple hours
I got to be skillful, noble, macho and subtle 
The Pit was fishing well too. Didn't get any big bruisers, but got enough decent
14-16'ers to fill the heart. In fact, picking up two of those in your first three or four
casts of the morning is a quick way to make a day :) One of them was so colorful that
I had to take some pictures to share:
That's a Pit 3 fish. I was going for the "Trifecta" (fish all three plumbed reaches in one
trip) but the four was NOT looking good. If this is a taste of the increased flows for the
future, we have our work cut out for us:
I had the ducky and a PFD in the truck, and if only I also had a helmet and a buddy
with a throw line, I might have tried that run just for the fun of it :) I had to run around
a bit on Pit 5 to find solitude, and had it for a good thirty minutes at this fine spot before
four guys walked through. The first one whistled to get my attention when I was wading
downstream in deep water, but if he thought I was going to give up the run to him, he
was very sadly mistaken. Three nice fish struck and two came to hand here, so together
with the scenery and brief solitude, again the day was made.
Lookin forward to next year . . . though as Dawn points out, there a gajillion other ways
to stay fishing through the short days of winter. 
