Yuba Report

Spent the weekend over on the Lower Yuba, like most weekends lately and to come. Fishing was fair to good. I look at the numbers and size of fish at the end of the two days and fishing should be ranked as good to really good. Both sets of clients commented that they had their best days ever on the Yuba, but I felt like we really had to work for our fish. There was dry spells, lots of fly changing, lots of back rowing, but some places where we really stacked numbers towards the end of the day. We caught fish on jimmy leggs, red copper johns, a new fly I am working on wichi is basicly a big attractor, and beads lower in the river. We hooked some nice fish in the 16-18” bracket and hit a few pods of NICE and HOT half pounders lower in the river along with a few 18+” fish that busted us off on the jump or run. Most of the migratory fish we found right above the dam so they should be moving up over the next week.

We even went and poked around below the diversion dam in the first few runs with limited success. Caught one trout. Did watch a ton of colored up salmon jumping and messing around in the wash of the dam…many looked pretty beat up and like they may not make it up the fish ladder to spawn in the upper river. Not a big deal as many spawn below the dam each year. Also saw a few half pounders jumping around in the wash as salmon chased them. Pretty cool.

Over all the river is slowly coming to life this fall. It should get really good right on time towards the end of february but I am still a bit concerned about the lack of salmon I am seeing the in deeper holes. I talked to a few DFG survey’ers who were putting in at the same time with a jet boat as I was and I asked about the lack of salmon I was seeing. They said they are stacked up above the bridge in the deeper holes and should start spreading down stream soon to cut redds and drop eggs. Good news but still I usually see a bunch of fish in the runs and riffles right now…may be like most things this year, a bit late.