Powerhouse 2 riffle and Carbon Flats
The Wild Trout Area starts where PG&E's Hat Creek Powerhouse 2 returns the creek's flow to the channel, a short fast riffle that is the most fished piece of water on the creek and holds up to that pressure. Below the riffle the creek spreads into a 2.2 mile glide over silt, sand and diatomaceous earth with heavy weed beds: the Carbon Flats, named for the old Carbon Bridge site, where the trout feed on tricos, baetis and PMDs in glass-smooth water. This is the technical spring creek water Hat Creek is known for; long leaders and exact imitations are the price of admission.
Reach it from Highway 299 east of Burney. The Fly Shop meets its wade clients at Hat Creek Park, the roadside park beside the Highway 299 bridge, and the powerhouse access is off the same road. The reach is PG&E and public land open to walk-in fishing.
Highway 299 to Lake Britton
About 1.75 miles below the powerhouse the creek passes under Highway 299 at Hat Creek Park, and a half mile further it changes character into a wide 1.2 mile riffle of embedded cobble and gravel with pockets and ledge pools. It fishes more like a freestone stream, holds stoneflies the flats do not, and gets much less pressure than the water upstream. A timber fish barrier built in 1968 sits a tenth of a mile above Lake Britton to keep suckers and other lake fish out of the Wild Trout Area, and the creek ends in Lake Britton, a PG&E reservoir on the Pit River. Hat Creek does not reach Shasta Lake.
Rainbow and brown trout
Hat Creek rises in Lassen Volcanic National Park and flows north about 45 miles to Lake Britton; the spring inflows of Rising River and Crystal Lake above Baum Lake make it one of California's largest spring creeks. The lower creek was poisoned to remove rough fish in 1968 and restocked with wild-strain rainbow, brown and brook trout, and the reach was designated a Wild Trout Area in 1972. Wild rainbows are the native trout and the mainstay of the fishery; browns are an introduced but self-sustaining share of the population, most at home in the slow weedy flats. Both are as selective as any trout in the state, and there is no reliable average size to quote, so fish the hatch and take what the creek gives.
The best months are May and June, when salmonflies, green drakes, little yellow stones, PMDs and caddis overlap. Tricos hatch nearly every morning in July and August with caddis at dusk; fall brings tricos, caddis, a few October caddis and blue-winged olives on overcast days; winter fishing is mostly BWOs and midges, with early salmonflies possible above the Highway 299 bridge in a warm spring.
Flows and the gauge
The only active USGS discharge gauge on Hat Creek, 11355500 Hat Creek near Hat Creek, is on the upper creek near the town of Hat Creek, well upstream of Baum Lake and the Wild Trout Area. It shows whether the creek is running normal, high or low, but it does not measure the Wild Trout Area itself: that flow is set by PG&E's Powerhouse 2 releases plus the spring inflows above Baum Lake, and CDFW describes it as a stable regime of roughly 550 to 650 cfs. No shop quotes a fishing range for the upper gauge, so the 100 to 220 cfs range this page compares against is the USGS 25th to 75th percentile band of daily flow at 11355500 across the year; readings inside it mean a normal creek.
Season and regulations
Hat Creek from Lake Britton upstream to Baum Lake, excluding the concrete Hat No. 2 intake canal, is open all year, artificial lures with barbless hooks only, and the trout limit is zero: everything goes back. The upper creek above Baum Lake is stocked and fishes under the general California trout rules. The old last-Saturday-in-April opener and 18 inch minimum no longer apply to the Wild Trout Area, so check the current CDFW freshwater sport fishing regulations (14 CCR 7.50) before you go.