Fishing Report - Lower Yuba 01-19-11

I got the chance to fish the Lower Yuba River today with Mike Williams. Mike is the "Fish-Outs" chairman for the Gold Country Fly Fishers, he deserved a day of fishing. We headed down from Grass Valley, from the warm sunshine into the soup. As I drove down I could see the fog hanging at the lower elevations down in Marysville, Yuba City. I started thinking to myself, "That's OK, I'm dressed right, no problem, we'll make the best of it". I really wasn't that pumped to have another fog shrouded day on the river, and sort of shrugged to myself, and then thought a little more, "What the heck are you thinking, It'll be great day, it's what you make of it, OK , I'm good to go!" And I was. We got down to the river and the river just looked perfect, I was stoked, fog, forget-a-bout it!

As it turned out we had a light wind come and by 11:00 or so we had a sunny day, the 1st one I've had on the river in awhile. The river was flowing at about 3160 cfs when you add Deer Creek into the flow and it ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day. Who knows maybe some one was listening to me talk to myself.


The water clarity was just about perfect, clear enough for the fish to see our flies, by obscure enough for stealth. This is my favorite condition. We started out wade fishing along the willow lines concentrating on the water that was about 10' to 16' off the bank and about 3' to 6' deep. I started rigged up with a Supper Floss rubberlegs, a Prince of Darkness and a natural Troutbead. I caught fish on each of them. We wade fished from about 10:30 to 12:30 and did well. It was about 11:30 and then right before my eyes the fog dissipated and I was standing in the river in full warm sunlight. Well what do you know. I landed my biggest fish of the day about 1o minutes later. Doesn't get much better than that. I was ready to rack my rod and row for Mike the rest of the day. A nice fish does that for me. Contentment, get me behind the oars and let me try to get others into fish. Sometimes it just takes a single fish and I'm ready to row the rest of the day.


Maybe you can see from the picture that the edges are pretty clear and the overall color is much more blue green. This eddy pool has about 5 to 6' of visibility. This is just about perfect. All we really need is some bugs, hopefully Skwalas to make the river really come alive. I don't think we saw more than a handful of bugs on the water all day, a few BWO mayflies. We saw a couple of small rises in the runs and one along the willows and that was it. It was definitely a shot and indicator day. A Steak and Eggs day. A big rubberlegs stonefly and a Troutbead. Throw on an attractor nymph in between and you're good to go.

We jumped in the boat and I rowed for Mike the rest of the day and we hooked up pretty regularly. Not that we landed everything we hooked but the fishing was pretty active. All the fish seemed healthy and in good shape. Mike was rigged with a Super Floss Rubberlegs, a red bodied Spitfire and a Trout bead. If I remember right most of the fish landed were taken on the rubber legs and the troutbead. Like I said, Steak and Eggs.



One thing for sure, it was another great day on the river, with a friend,and fishing, nothing else that I'd rather do. Get out there and have some fun, you might catch a fish to boot!