Stanislaus River Fishing July 2011

We just finished fishing the Stanislaus River off Highway 4, and man was it an excellent few days of fishing for trout.  With all of the rain this year, the river was running higher than we have ever seen it, and that seemed to positively impact our overall fishing numbers. 

Please watch the video of how the fishing ended up:

Our fishing trip started out with buying some live crickets and night crawler worms from Ebbetts Pass Sporting Goods.  They are located just off Highway 4 in Arnold, CA.  This store I thought was going to be great in terms of help, as the young guy I talked to the day before told me the owner would be there the next day when I planned on driving through their town, but not so much the case.  Actually, the old man was cool and helpful with some fishing tips, but his wife was VERY un-cool and actually quite rude.  She was trying to tell my friend and I we could not fish where we were planning on fishing off Boards Crossing, which ended up being completely NOT TRUE.  Quite strange that she would act so rude to new customers trying to bring her business to her fishing shop.

Either way, this place did not disturb our fishing trip, and we pretty much laughed her off a few miles down the road as a grump.

The drive from Arnold to Boards Crossing Road is not very far at all.  And for sure B Davis and I were pretty pumped to get the fishing line in the water, because this was the first time we had live crickets to fish with.  In the past we had used pretty much everything else, but not crickets yet.

We started off walking down a good ways downriver to what is known as “The Gorge”.  It’s about a 45 minute walk from the actual Boards Crossing, but once we got there, it was well worth the hike.  Since the water of the Stanislaus is running so high right now.

Fishing With the Sun Shinning

On our first day of fishing, we met a girl at the local breakfast restaurant down in Murphy’s, California.  And, since she looked like she might know something about trout fishing on the Stanislaus, we asked her what she would recommend.  And of course, any

fisherman or woman has their own opinions on everything, but this girl told us you won’t catch any trout in the middle of the day.  Well, that too was WRONG.  We sure caught a ton of trout in the middle of the day.  In-fact, all of the trout we caught from the Gorge was during the middle of the day when the sun was shinning pretty hard.  Of course, after the long hike down the river, it might have been a better idea to fish later or just stay out of the sun for a little while longer, but we didn’t.  The trout kept pouncing on the crickets so we just couldn’t stop.  Brad even caught a German Brown Trout on a spinner, and that was his first trout on a lure EVER.

Speaking of fisherwomen, we ran into one of the best we have ever seen on all of our adventures trout fishing off Highway 4.  There was a young girl maybe in her early twenties who was sitting down in a lawn chair in the shade with her fishing pole and book, who was absolutely nailing the fish.  She was using salmon eggs and the trout were loving it.  We noticed that in the span of about 45 minutes, she must have pulled in about 3 keeper trout, and eventually she got up and left with a string of 5 nice sized 12-14 inch trout for dinner.  Congrats to her, and it was great to see trout being caught out of the Stanislaus on salmon eggs.  We ourselves did not have any luck with using the salmon eggs however.

Catching Trout with Crickets:

There are a few things we learned about fishing with crickets to catch the trout.  Here is a list:

1. get used to chasing the crickets around on the ground after you take one from the cage
2. Once you have one, hold it with two fingers(thumb and pointer) while you are hooking it
3. Hook the cricket in the thorax and than back through the neck
4. When the small trout nibble, relax and take a few seconds before you jerk the fishing pole
5. When the larger trout strike, you will know for sure
6. Keep the crickets in a cool place out of the direct sunlight
7. A “half tube” of crickets lasted two of us 2 full days
8. Don’t spend more than $4 on a half tube of live crickets
9. Use either a bobber or a few hooks to get the cricket presenting properly
10. When fishing with crickets, don’t freak out about the cricket juice that comes out after the initial hooking

Pictures of Rainbow Trout from the 2011 Stanislaus Fishing Trip: