Middle Fork American Fishing Trips

One Day Trips Coming Soon!

As one of the two outfitters providing fishing trips on the class IV section of Middle Fork of the American River, Wilderness Adventures extends the invitation to experience the beauty and excitement of Middle Fork American River on one of our multi-day fishing trips. Known to many Californians as a great whitewater rafting trip the Middle Fork receives virtually no angling pressure in these pristine 16 miles of river, so the fishing is great if you can get access it. That is where we come in and guide you safely down the rapids and into the productive fishing waters. Wilderness Adventures guarantees that you will have one of the best fishing trips of your life. Our professional and licensed guides can take you to the hottest fishing runs on the river. Be prepared to catch and release many big beautiful Rainbows, Browns and the occasional Brook Trout. Our trips are 2 to 4 day wilderness style trips with gourmet cuisine. This is a truly remarkable and unique fishing trip.

Wilderness Adventures is dedicated to keeping our fishery strong so all trips are catch and release. As well we fish with only single barb-less hooks to keep our trout beautiful without injuries or scars . Our guides will be happy to supply you with the proper hooks or pinch the barbs down on yours. We take all levels of fly fisherman and spin fisherman down this section, so all are welcome to come out and experience this amazing trip. At Wilderness Adventures we set the bar high; We only have professional fishing guides with years of experience fishing these waters and waters alike. More information on what to throw and what works the best for certain times of year can be found by calling our office at 1-800-323-7238 or 530-622-6887.

The Middle Fork American is 16-25 miles (depending on length of trip) of pristine fishing waters. This river does have a few significant class rapids which keep most anglers out but come with us and our guides we lead you down the rapids safely or walk you around them if you do not wish to partake in the white water part of the trip. All Rapids are easily walked around and you can fish the banks while the boat navigates the rapid and meets you at the bottom.

Below is an article written by Cal Kellogg of the Fish Sniffer magazine on his trip down the Middle Fork American with us last year and more information of what to expect can be found by going to the middle Fork American rafting page of this web site and seeing what to bring for the multiday trip.

White Water And Wild Trout

By Cal Kellogg

Ask a hundred northern Californians what they know about the American River and the majority of them will say something about whitewater rafting. The balance, made up primarily of History Channel aficionados, will talk about the river's gold rush past. Few if any will mention the American's wild rainbows and browns.

I've lived in Auburn with the North and Middle Forks of the American practically in my backyard since the middle 90's and up until this June I'd never taken the time to seriously explore the American's trout fishery.

Sure I knew that both the North and Middle Forks were wild trout waters that hadn't been stocked with truck trout for years and I'd tried my hand at fly fishing and bait soaking in easily accessible sections of the Middle Fork with a moderate level of success, but despite hearing rumors of fantastic backcountry trout action on the 16 mile stretch of the Middle American between Oxbow Reservoir and the infamous Ruck-A-Chuck Rapids, I'd never made an effort to penetrate the steep rugged canyon to sample the trout action myself.

Sometimes the best opportunities just come at you right out of thin air and that's exactly what happened back on June 2 when I got an email from Julie Stanley at Wilderness Adventures inviting me to join them on an overnight rafting and fishing trip on the Middle American on June 25 and 26. The email explained that Wilderness Adventures was one of the few companies that offered fishing trips and that they wanted more anglers to experience the great trout action the river provides.

My niece Brooke Culverhouse had wanted to go camping and I thought she'd be a perfect fit for the trip that would combine fishing, camping and running class IV whitewater, so I asked if she could accompany me. The next thing I knew Brooke and I were signed up for the trip and counting down the days leading up to the kick off of our American River adventure.

Early on the morning of June 25 the handful of anglers that were invited on the trip, including Ralph and Lisa Cutter, owner operators of the California School of Fly Fishing and filmmaker/fly fishing guide Michael "Mikey" Wier of Burl Productions and Fish Eye Video Magazine, met with our river guides in Auburn. We loaded out gear into waterproof bags and all piled into vans for the 40 minute ride to the lower end of Oxbow Reservoir where the Middle American merges with the Rubicon River. After packing the rafts and a listening to a safety seminar we all loaded into our designated rafts and shoved off into the current.

Brooke and I were teamed with Bryan Schwartz, who is the owner of Wilderness Adventures. Roger Lee the Founder of Wilderness Adventures and one of the Middle Fork's trout fishing pioneers was piloting one of the other rafts.

Ralph, Lisa and Mikey chose to use fly gear, while the rest of us were armed with spinning gear. Brooke and I had a full regiment of spoons, spinners, wet flies and plugs. We started out fishing quarter ounce black and yellow Panther Martins and stuck with them for the balance of the trip, while the other spin anglers went primarily with countdown Rapalas.

For the first couple miles the fishing was fairly slow and our five fishing rafts combined for only 3 or 4 trout, but we were fishing a stretch of river that is regularly hit by bank anglers. We hadn't been on the water long when we came to our first real whitewater challenge, the Tunnel Chute.

The Tunnel Chute is a living roaring reminder of the Middle Fork's Gold Rush days. Originally the river ran around a narrow ridge forming a tight horseshoe. In 1889, miners struck on the idea of digging a tunnel through the solid rock of the ridge and diverting the river through it. This would leave the horseshoe bend high and dry giving the miners full access to the riverbed's gold.

The plan worked and the river continues to run through the tunnel today. Leading into the tunnel is the chute, an 80 foot chute of solid granite that features an 18 foot drop. At the bottom of chute the current pushes you though the tunnel and you emerge into a true wilderness.

I won't kid you, running the chute was scary, but when you hit the bottom you feel like you've accomplished something. After emerging from the tunnel the productivity of the fishing increased almost immediately. I hooked and released a pair of rainbows and Brooke nailed a pair of her own. Her third fish was a 2 plus pound hook jawed rainbow, that was definitely worthy of a photo, but it shook the hook before we could get it into the net.

As we headed downstream it was clear that the river's wild rainbows had little fear as we hooked fish averaging 12 to 14 inches with great regularity.

Around midday we pulled to the side of the river for lunch. As the guides put out a big sandwich spread and fresh fruit, the anglers compared notes. Spinning tackle was out performing the fly gear due to the river's high rate of flow. The key to getting hit was getting your offering down near the bottom in the seams that separated the slow and fast water.

After lunch we pushed downstream toward the sandbar where we'd camp for the night. Throughout the afternoon and early evening we continued to enjoy steady hookups and had the thrill of running several short stretches of whitewater.

After a mouth-watering dinner of barbequed tri-tip, salmon and potatoes topped off with delicious Dutch oven carrot cake, I had a chance to talk to Roger Lee about the Middle Fork's trout fishing.

Roger confided that he started fishing the river seriously in 1992. "The trout are aggressive and catching them generally isn't a problem. We started out using nothing but silver Kastmasters and we did well. Gradually we also started throwing Panther Martins and sinking Rapalas," said Lee.

"These days we use a lot of Rapalas because they seem to catch bigger fish, but spoons and spinners will produce more fish simply because they get down near the bottom quicker. We catch more rainbows than browns, but the biggest fish are generally browns. We practice catch and release, so we don't weigh the big fish that we catch. We've landed a lot of big browns over the years, that I'd estimate to be in the 5 to 7 pound class. The largest brown we ever measure was 28 inches," disclosed Lee.

"I've been fishing this river long enough that some patterns have emerged. First of all, the largest fish most often come from deepwater pockets that are adjacent to the current right next to the bank. Right now the river is flowing at 1,200 cfs all the time because we have a lot of run off, but as the summer goes on the dams up stream will regulate the flow. The typical pattern is for the flow to increase in the morning and slow down in the afternoon. The trout are most active and bite the best when the flows are up. Like anywhere else the fishing fluctuates from day to day. I'd say the fishing we saw today was fair. On a good day we'll be hooking 40 trout per angler," exclaimed Lee.

Everyone was pretty tired at the end of the first day and I think everyone was in bed by 11 o'clock. On day two we were all greeted with a terrific eggs benedict breakfast, before shoving off for another full day of trout fishing.

The action on day two was even better than on the first day. Brooke had matched me fish for fish on day one, but on day two luck was smiling on me and I definitely had the hot rod, landing well over a dozen high jumping rainbows that ranged up to 2 pounds.

Mikey Weir landed the biggest fish of the trip on the second day when he tempted an impressive 6-pound brown with a heavily weighted streamer fly.

We arrived at Driver's Flat Road below Ruck-A-Chuck Rapids on Saturday afternoon and headed back to Auburn. It had been a magnificent fishing trip, certainly one of the top 10 fishing trips I've been part of. I'm out of space and I haven't come close to describing all the excitement, great fishing and camaraderie that the trip featured.

If you'd like to experience the Middle American's largely untapped trout fishing with spinning gear or a fly rod while enjoying great scenery and awesome food, give the folks at Wilderness Adventures at call at (800) 323-7238 or visit them on the web at wildrivertrips.com. Bryan, and company will take great care of you