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Riffle & Reach McCloud River · Upper Sacramento · Mount Shasta

The rivers below Mount Shasta

Fly fishing the McCloud and the Upper Sacramento, river by river

Two trout rivers drain the country south of Mount Shasta, forty minutes apart by road and almost nothing alike in the water. These pages gather what is worth knowing before you drive: what the flow and clarity numbers mean, which insects matter in which month, how to read broken water, where the public access actually is, and how California writes the rules that apply.

  • Twenty two pages
  • Six sections
  • Last checked 20/08/2026

Six ways into the same two rivers

Each section opens with a summary

Two rivers, one canyon system

The short version

The Upper Sacramento and the Lower McCloud both end in Shasta Lake, and both hold wild rainbow trout, but they were built by different forces. The Sacramento is a steep freestone river fed by rain and snowmelt, running beside Interstate 5 and a mainline railway with public access at almost every exit. The McCloud below its dam is fed by enormous cold springs, sits at the bottom of a forested canyon, and is reached by one long gravel road.

How the two rivers differ, at a glance
 Upper SacramentoLower McCloud
Trout waterRoughly 38 miles, from Box Canyon Dam near Mount Shasta City to the head of Shasta LakeRoughly 25 miles, from McCloud Dam down to Shasta Lake
Water sourceRain and snowmelt, freestone, quick to rise and quick to dropLarge cold springs plus a controlled dam release, very stable
Summer temperatureWarms downstream through the day, coolest in the upper reaches at first lightCold all summer, the reason it fishes in August
CharacterPocket water, plunge pools, fast riffles, short castsDeep runs, boulder gardens, long walks between spots
Getting thereFreeway exits, town streets in Dunsmuir, signed public accessOne graded dirt road out of the town of McCloud, then footpaths
Main troutWild rainbow trout, some brown troutWild rainbow trout, brown trout lower down

That table is the reason most of this site is split by river rather than by technique. A tactic that works in the Sacramento pocket water at Sweetbriar is the wrong tactic in a McCloud canyon run, and the same August afternoon can be too warm to fish on one river and perfectly cold on the other. The conditions section explains how to tell which situation you are in before you leave the house.

The ground these pages cover

The McCloud River running green over boulders through a conifer canyon south of Mount Shasta in Northern California
The Lower McCloud holds its colour and its temperature through the summer because most of its water arrives from springs rather than from snowmelt.

Everything here concerns the drainage between Mount Shasta and Shasta Lake: the Upper Sacramento from Box Canyon Dam through Dunsmuir and Castella to Lakehead, the McCloud from the falls above the town of McCloud down through the reservoir to the canyon water below the dam, and the towns that give access to both, Mount Shasta City, Dunsmuir, McCloud and Castella.

The rivers south of Shasta Lake, including the tailwater below Keswick Dam near Redding that anglers call the Lower Sac, are a different fishery with different rules and different fish. They come up only where the confusion is worth clearing, mainly in the note on steelhead seasons.

How to use these pages

  • Every page opens with a short answer in a box, so the main point survives being read in ten seconds.
  • Numbers that change, such as flows and regulation limits, are explained rather than quoted. The page tells you which source publishes the current figure.
  • Dates are written day, month, year. The date at the foot of each page is when it was last checked, not when it was first written.
  • Nothing here is sold, booked or arranged. These are reading notes, and the site information page says who publishes them.

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