Report Date 1/6/12

The Clearwater fished decent over the past week.   The Clearwater region received a large amount of moisture around Christmas which caused the river to rise very rapidly and blow out, but by the first of the year the river was on the drop and fishing well.   Sunday through Tuesday produced the best results and fishing started to taper off toward the later part of the week.   Due to good fishing during the early part of the week the lower Clearwater was a busy place by Friday.  The increase in fishing pressure combined with rapidly dropping water conditions have combined to make fishing spotty.   It seems that the low flows we were dealing with in December have returned.  With the increased in fishing pressure one of the keys to success will be finding fish that have not had any boats blasting over the top of them. 

The two techniques that produced the best last week were side drifting and back trolling plugs/diver and bait combinations.   Normally with the lower water we a looking at for the foreseeable future back trolling would be the go to method for catching steelhead, but at this time the river still has a slight amount of color to it which will allow angers to continue to have success side drifting.  During conditions like these we suggest that anglers pick which ever method they have the most confidence in and fish it hard.   In the world of steelhead fishing we like to say that, “time is not spent its invested,” so put your time in and good things will happen.