Middle Fork Feather River Fishing Report 5-15-25

Fly fishing on the Wild and Scenic Middle Fork Feather River continues to be good to great depending on the day and angler. Most days we are working for the grabs, but the effort is well rewarded. Flows have dropped to 93cfs on the Portola gauge and are likely to drop further as runoff is waning. Flows in Sloat are estimated at 500 cfs and are still a bit pushy. Water temps have come up with a reading of 65 degrees in the late afternoon near Clio. The weather is cooler and unsettled this week which helped drop water temps in Clio to. 58 degrees in the afternoon. Below Two River water temps are ranging 48-54 degrees.

Dry dropper is still my go too rig on the Middle Fork Feather River. Yesterday I had at least 8 fish eat the big dry only landing two. There are March Browns and PMD mayflies hatching mid morning with bwo spinners laying eggs mid day. Caddis and Yellow Sally Stoneflies are hatching in the evening and ovipositing mid day making them available to the trout. Fish have a lot of food to choose from at this time. Fish are spread out in a variety of water types from fast riffles to slow deep frog water. All methods are working with dry fly and dry dropper being my favorites. Swinging flies on the Trout Spey setup is still producing especially soft hackles swung to rising fish during the hatch.

What’s Working

Nymph’s: Raindrop Perdigon (14-16), Rusty Jig (14-16), Plastic Surgeon (14-16), Electrolyte Baetis (14-16), Jigged Pheasant Tail (14-16), Crystal Warrior (14-16), Pat’s Rubberlegs (8-10), Simple Stone (8), Mercers Poxy Stone (8-10) Dries: E/C Caddis (14-18), Missing Link Yellow Sally (14-16), Sparkle Flag (18-20), Parachute Adams (14-18) Chubby Chernobyl orange (10)Streamers: Prospector (8), Sculpzilla olive, tan, natural, white (10), Dolly Llama olive/white (8)