Putah Creek

Fishing Report

3/29/2026

Flows are as follows from Dreamflows:

I started out at near the speed sign, and walked up to the main leg of the split, as pictured below::

This section of Putah Creek is awesome, since it provides good fishing both at very high flows on the smaller legs, and at lower flows on the larger leg. I was out with my euro rig (10’ 3wt) and was using zebra midges with tungsten bead heads, as well as bead head Hare’s Ear. I ended up landing a solid sized fish within the first 30 minutes of getting there, I think helped out because of the lower flows (see above). I ended up crossing the creek while the flow was low, and, even though I said to myself “no sketchy wading today”, I could not have known that the flows were increasing from the output of the dam that day, so when it came time to cross back over, I had no idea which way I came, and every direction felt too deep and fast. At one point, I was so close to taking a spill that I just rushed the last few feet of crossing and luckily made it out the other side dry. So, don’t forget, this is a tailwater, and the flows are subject to change at any time. This outing was a half-day only, so by the time 11:00 rolled around, pretty much every pullout had someone, and the river was busy. There was a guide and his client at #5, but the client was clearly not prepared to catch anything at Putah because I did not see one single drag-free indicator drift. Anyways, it was a beautiful day to be out, and I’m glad I had the chance to catch such a nice fish today.

Takeaway

I think the biggest “hack” for not getting skunked at Putah for me has been to show up early. Consistently, I catch fish within the first hour of being there, and then the activity seems to die off after that. It could be skill issue, but it’s just an observation I made. I think with the flows fluctuating like this, it probably hinders the feeding ability of the fish, which could explain why in this particular instance there was less activity shortly after 8:00am.

Fish