I am new to the board and new to California. I've been fly fishing for just over a year and a half now. I moved here from Missouri, which had some good trout and fly fishing opportunities. While it doesn't have the big mountains and mountain streams, it is one of the richest in natural cold water springs, some of them pump out millions of gallons of water a day. Trout were introduced into these waters near the turn of the 20th Century, and within the past year I'd make trips with my best friend to the North Fork of the White River, the Eleven Point, and Crane Creek. One interesting fact about Missouri fly fishing is that you almost never fish with dry flies. We just don't have hatches, certainly not prolific ones, so you end up using a lot of streamers and nymphing.
We also have numerous "trout parks" but those places depress the * out of me. They spawn trout at an incredible rate and a bunch of hillbillies with stringers and treble hooks come and wrench the fish out of the water at an alarming rate, standing no more than 3 feet away from the next guy, before taking their catch back to their concrete slabs and barbecue pits to cook, usually throwing the guts in the stream.
My favorite stream, Crane Creek, has a special affinity with California. For one, it is purportedly one of the few streams left in the world with a pure strain of McCloud trout. Just how "pure" that strain is up for debate. But the creek is also very small, usually taking 1-5 steps to get across at points, and never over waste deep, but usually only knee deep. The fish are generally small: 7-11 inches. Though there is one 20" hog in one hole that I believe I managed to hook once but brook off (others have documented on this fish on sites like FFA). It reminds me a lot of some of the mountains streams people post pictures of in SoCal, only, as you'll see below, there is a lot of greenery and fewer rocks.
This is where I come from:
Crane Creek in late winter
DSC_0881 by arotator, on Flickr
DSC_0882 by arotator, on Flickr
DSC_0887 by arotator, on Flickr
The North Fork of the White
DSC_0013 by arotator, on Flickr
DSC_0026 by arotator, on Flickr
DSC_0050 by arotator, on Flickr
DSC_0113 by arotator, on Flickr
DSC_0142 by arotator, on Flickr
Funny story regarding that last picture. This was our first trip to the NFoW and my friend and I had been fishing for almost 10 hours over the course of two days without catching anything. It's a tough river to fish. Anyway, that was the first fish we had ever caught on a fly rod and after all that time we were really excited to finally get one. My friend started running down the river and nearly broke his ankle just to see it. It's still one of the bigger trout I've caught, almost 16 inches.
Thanks for reading.
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