California

California is the most diverse fly fishing state in the contiguous United States, a geography so varied that it encompasses everything from the technical spring creeks of the Eastern Sierra to the powerful winter steelhead rivers of the North Coast to the salt flats and estuaries of the Bay Area. No other state demands such adaptability from its anglers, and none rewards the curious explorer more generously.

The Eastern Sierra is the spiritual home of California dry fly fishing. Hot Creek, a short, spring-fed channel near Mammoth Lakes managed as an ecological reserve, is one of the most technically demanding and visually spectacular spring creeks in the West — crystalline water over a chalk-white bottom, large brown trout rising to impossibly specific hatches, and the Sierra Nevada rising as a wall behind it. The lower Owens River below Pleasant Valley Reservoir is a tailwater of national reputation, producing brown trout of exceptional size on Baetis and midge imitations fished in the shadow of the Alabama Hills. Bishop Creek above town drains the high Sierra and offers wild rainbow and brown trout in classic mountain freestone habitat.

Northern California is steelhead country. The Upper Sacramento River below Lake Siskiyou at the foot of Mount Shasta is a pristine, catch-and-release rainbow trout fishery of world-class caliber — cold, clear, and perpetually under the shadow of a volcanic peak. The McCloud, Trinity, and Klamath rivers drain vast wilderness drainage systems and carry winter steelhead runs that draw anglers from across the world. The Smith River, California's last undammed major river, runs the color of jade through towering redwoods and delivers chrome-bright steelhead on two-handed rods in conditions that feel entirely removed from the state's reputation for sunshine and crowds.

The San Francisco Bay Area is the unlikely gateway to saltwater fly fishing on the California coast. Striped bass pursue anchovies and sardines through the bay and along the beaches of the Marin Peninsula, offering accessible urban fly fishing of surprising quality. The Russian River provides a short drive north to winter steelhead, while the Pit River system in the volcanic plateau northeast of Redding holds populations of wild rainbow and brown trout that receive a fraction of the pressure their quality deserves.