Lower Yuba River Fishing Report 01-14-11

The Knothead

I was fortunate enough to get all my honey do's done and sneak out and fish the Lower Yuba again yesterday. That's sort of the way fishing works if you're not a real "Trout Bum". You've got to collect enough "Brownie Points" to get out. That's the way it works for me anyway.

So, I made it down to the river yesterday and fished with Mike and Todd Williams. The day started with a low overcast and was pretty cold. There wasn't any precipitation to speak of just sort of a high fog. The river was still running at 3,000 cfs. and has cleared a bit more from last time. The water has turned to a blue shade, more blue than green on the edges with visibility of 4 or 5 feet. We floated the river and the further you go down the clarity got better.

The fishing was so so, I had a few fish to hand and had caught them when we had hiked up stream and wade fished. I was sticking to what worked earlier in the week with a Natural Roe Troutbead, different Skwala Stone Nymphs, and red Copper Johns. I was primarily indicator nymphing with lighter weight to avoid farming sticks. Whenever I would add more shot I'd hook a stick, and I'm talking trophy sticks, willows with whole root wads, I could have brought home quite a collection. So, I resorted to lighter weight and and some tight line nymphing.

As far as bugs goes, bad news and some good news. When fishing, I saw maybe half a dozen bugs, all mayflies, which in a days fishing is not so good. On the bright side, when we stopped for lunch at about 1:30, the full sun had come out for about an hour or more and we were sitting along the riverside in the cobble and the Skwalas started crawling around us. Not a huge number, but probably a dozen or so. I hadn't seen any in the drift though. While we were sitting and checking the bugs out, a big splash happened in the eddy pool in front of us. A Skwala rise if I ever heard one. So, maybe Skwala time is going to be happening pretty soon.

We ran into a couple of fishing buddies later, one was Ralph Wood, who said that he'd picked up two fish on Skwala dries. More thoughts to chew on. If we get continued warmer weather, get ready, it's coming.