Lower Yuba River - Fishing Report 01-28-11

I fished the Lower Yuba yesterday with Greg DeYoung and his son Tucker. I always get excited when I get a chance to take a father and son team fishing. It's what I always think is the best thing about fly fishing. Getting out with your family or friends and enjoying the outdoors.

The bite was a little slow in the morning with the weather a little colder and then the fog clearing out by mid morning for a generally clear and somewhat warm day. We picked up a few fish swinging flies in the tailouts and nymphing the edges when we were hiking and wading in the morning. We fished the edges along the runs was slow in the morning session. Just a couple of fish. But that has been the trend lately. The fishing has typically picked up as the day gets warmer.

At about 12:30 we started floating down the river in my drift boat and found fish in the lower portion of the runs where the water was deeper and moving at a medium to slow walking speed. The after noon was not red hot by any means but consistent. We didn’t concentrate on the willow runs with Skwala Dries much, but Tucker did manage a nice 17” +/- rainbow on a foam Skwala Dry.




We located a few pods of fish stationed in the lower ends of the runs a fair ways above the tailouts where we got hits on most passes through with deep indicator methods and landed quite a few. All and all we had a pretty productive day.




At about 4:00 we went down and through a chute and I eddied out in the corner of a riffle. As soon as I eddied out at the riffle corner, a fish hit Greg's nymph and freight trained down stream. Before we knew it, gone. That's that way it goes sometimes with a big fish. They hit, take off downstream and before you know it or can even get a game plan together, gone. The only thing left is the questions, steelhead? and how big?

As we still pondered that fish, I headed down and eddied out in the next corner of the riffle and the same thing happened, off to the races. I followed this one down and we managed to work the fish to the side and after a couple of spirited runs Greg and I were able to get out of the boat and were able to net it. Whew! It fish was the fish of the day, a fat chromer that went 20” or 21”.



I had a great day with Greg and Tucker and it is one of my favorite experiences getting a father and son on the river. It was a treat to see them enjoying themselves on the river and of course catching fish. It's my hope to see more of this in the future. Like I've always said.
"It's about Life and Fly Fishing"

Notes and Impressions

It’s still my overall impression that the fish are looking up opportunistically on the edges and there just aren’t enough Skwalas to have them really locking in on a very sparse emergence. This will change in the upcoming weeks as the real Skwala emergence starts up. Stay tuned.

Flows: 3000 out of Englbright and about 175 out of Deer Creek for a total of 3175 +/-

Color: Bluer than Green with visibility of about 8 feet

Bugs: A number of PMD’s, a couple of Skwala’s in the drift. I searched the rocks along and below the riffles and didn’t see many Skwala cases.

Bugs of the Day: Best Producer, still the Rubberleg Stone in a light brown with a green tint, copper johns, 7mm natural troutbeads.

Rigging: Deep Indicator Nymphing with heavy shot. We were having enough success with nymphing that we didn’t really try a dry rigg with a Skwala Dry much. We had success when we swung the lower portions of the runs above the riffles, but not right above the tailouts where the current speed picked up.