Kurt

Hello all- This is my first post here.... awesome info! I just finished up an epic trip to Crane yesterday by myself. My brother and I ventured out there several years ago, and I remember the upper Wire Road access all dried up along with a stream that was trying to hang on. To my surprise, Crane is now flourishing into a wonderful habitat for these beautiful McCloud 'bows. It just goes to show how hardy and wild these fish really are. I started out behind the baseball diamonds and worked my way upstream past the main bridge. All-in-all, I landed 9 and hooked another 3 or 4. Some of these little buggers think that they are steelhead... once hooked, they swim as fast as they can right toward you, spitting the hook, and giving you little or no chance of landing them. It's great! Everything that Kevin has mentioned is great advice for this little creek. I, myself, used a hopper most of the day with an extremely long (4') 7x dropper. I switched between a red San Juan worm and BH Hare's Ear for the dropper.... both successful. The key to fishing Crane is patience.... stop, listen, look around, think about how you are going to make that next sidearm cast under that tree in order to make a soft enough presentation. You only get once chance here, and these fish will reward you with amazing flips and long, powerful runs for their size. The highlight of the day was a bow destroying my hopper a split-second after it landed, missing the set, casting to the same spot, and then landing the largest fish of the day, around 13". A word of advice... pinch down your barbs. Here's a picture that I quickly took from Monday.... enjoy. Kurt