South Fork of the Eel - 1/8/2010 - Video Added

Finally getting caught up at work and got to bail a little early today.  The South Fork is in perfect shape, so I hit it for a little over an hour right before sunset.  A drift boat floated by as I paddled upstream to work a favorite piece of water - I asked if they'd had any luck.  "Only luck we've had is bad luck", they reported.  I back-trolled a copper hotshot down through the hole real slow, taking video and snapping some stills.  No fish around but the river is like dreamland right now.  I'll go back soon.  

Nice!!!!

 Such Beautiful Country...

Beautiful river!  Thanks for the report and pictures Eric.

nice pics.

Thanks for the report and the visuals Eric,
fish or not, it's a scenic paddle 

My next goal is to yak fish the Sac River in the Redding area for trout with fly rod.
Nymphs and egg patterns should work

I always enjoy your pictorials and narration,,,,,glad to see someone getting out in an area like that.

Epic , I love the misty river pics.

Never thought I would be thinking that catching fish is the least important thing, but after those pics who cares.  The nature is beautiful.  You'll get them next time.  Thanks Andy

i love fishing the eel, the south fork is nice and easy to manage, Way to get out, looking forward for more reports from there.

Mike

Awesome report.  Did you see anything rolling?  The runs seem down this year.

Matt

Thanks for the report and the photos.  Even a skunk is a great day on the river.  This is why I love steelhead fishing.

Thanks for the report Eric. I can't wait to hookup to try some steelhead fishing. I
have never done it before so I'm looking forward to it. Another challenge for me to
face.

Jedmo

Awesome report.  Did you see anything rolling?  The runs seem down this year.

Matt

Didn't see anything rolling.  The run in general does seem down this year.  Sac is so-so, Klamath not as good as expected, Eel not that great, but the little hatchery up at the Smith had a record return - over 2000 adult spawners I think.  I recently read that the hatchery represents about 20% of the run on the Smith, but that doesn't sound right - I hope there are more wild fish than that.

Whipped this out last night in record time, but I couldn't publish it due to lack of hard drive space.  This is a two year old Dell, that's all I know about what it might have for memory...etc.  I don't do that knowledge...  Anyway, I'd seen a couple months ago that I was woefully low on hard drive space (99% full of what I figured was pics and vids), and I put off doing anything about it and tolerated low-grade problems like sticky mouse and slow programs that I attributed to it.  So last night I couldn't publish and I tried dumping other stuff manually to free up space (I told you, I'm a computer caveman), and nothing is working - can't even publish a compressed 60 MB version.  I give up and then it occurs to me this morning as I wake:  Google "freeing up space" (genius, I know).  Within a minute I had 33% of my hard drive clear without even using a download.  I don't know if I learned anything - I'll have to wait and see if I remember this next time I'm low on hard drive.   

Published right up after my little cleansing.   

Hi Eric,

You can add an external USB hard drive to store all you pictures & video.  It's dirt cheap nowaday!  Thanks for the report and video.  I didn't know you're good at Karate