Bugs - The Yuba Skwala Stone

SKWALA STONES

Entomology:
Skwala Stonefly
Perlodidae
Order: Plecoptera (Stonefly)
Family: Perlodidae
Sub family:perlodinae
Genus: Skwala
Species:Americana (American Springfly)



It’s late January and the word on the streets is that the Skwalas are out. It's time to tie up some big bugs and get ready. The last time I fished the Yuba I picked up a couple of nice fish with a Mercer’s Skwala Nymph. It’s a good one.

The Skwala activity on the Lower Yuba River can start as early as late December and then transitions to "strong" activity beginning mid February and generally lasting until mid April. The Skwala is a very important hatch in that it is the first big meal of the season. Regardless of how many adults there are, the fish know they are there. Fish make their living on eating the predominant insects and food sources of the season.

If you’re fishing on the Lower Yuba River and someone asks you what pattern to use for the Skwalas, tell him without breaking into a grin, “Try a Skwala Emerger”. Like all stoneflies, Skwala's crawl from the river and actually hatch on riverside rocks or vegetation, so there is no emerging period when they are available to trout, just the nymphs and adults. Hence, no emerger patterns for Skwalas.


Skwala nymphs are predatory and feed on other aquatic insects during their one year spent maturing in the river. I heard from Frank Rinella that Ralph Cutter has a theory that the Skwalas are munching on the caddis and that’s why we haven’t seen as many of them on the river. Who knows? If that's even remotely true, there must be a lot of Skwalas!


Once spring starts knocking on the door they crawl from the water, hatch as adults, and go about the business of finding a mate, an interesting process for stoneflies. They will locate mates by "drumming" their abdomens on the branches of bankside willows, a potential mate will "drum" back, and this heated "Mating Game" will continue until a match is made or they give up and try to find another mate. Another interesting aspect of skwala stoneflies is that only the females have wings, and is one of the reasons that skwala dry fly patterns will often incorporate a black egg sack. The females are the ones most often available to the trout while the males are busy crawling around on dry land, drumming up lost love.


In Mid-February (on the average every year) the water temps start to increase a bit. Water temps are always the impetus for insect emergence. The Skwala nymph starts getting active around 39-40 degrees. Just think about it. It has been a while since the trout were gobbling up eggs and they have been eating small mayflies for awhile. The rainbow trout and steelhead are getting into their pre-spawn mode and the larger trout are thinking about perpetuating the species. Their metabolism is starting to pick up a bit from the previous two months of colder water temps and they will most certainly chow down on larger types of food sources and also to prepare for the spawn. Once the water temps start coming to about 45 degrees the bug of choice is the Adult Skwala. Time to tie, buy, beg or steal Skwala Dry patterns.


The Skwala nymphs prefers fast moving, well aerated, cold, clear water with a rock and cobble bottom. This is probably why the Skwalas are present on the lower Yuba River. The nymph generally emerges in the late afternoon and into the evening. Stonefly nymphs are generally pretty poor swimmers and Skwala's are no exception. They swim, or at least attempt to, in a side-to-side type motion with most of the movement taking place on the upper body and the tail kind of dragging along.


They are still prone to getting caught up in the drift once they become very active and start heading for the banks. Fish will stage in the shallow riffle areas and will actively search for the adults drifting along the banks and under the willows. Be careful not to step and wade into areas that could be holding opportunistic fish looking for a big meal.


The Skwala hatch on the Lower Yuba River is the real deal! It is not a prolific hatch, yet it is an important food source that helps kick off every new season. Get ready! They're coming!

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!

Fishing the Lower Sac - January 13th, 2010

Rainbow and Clouds on the Lower Sac




I was invited to fish the Lower Sacramento River by a local fly club member, Don Steffa,who is organizing a trip to the Green River in April. He was meeting Steve Cooper of "High Plains Drifters" who has a unique Fly Fishing Guide Service and guides on Eastern Oregon's Owyhee River and Southern Washington's Grande Ronde River. I had seen Steve's slide show and presentaion at the November meeting of the Gold Country Fly Fishers in Grass Valley. Don and Steve have a long history of fishing together. I was looking forward to a day on the Lower Sacramento and fishing with new acquaintances and listening to stories and experiences of fishing the rivers that Steve knows so well.

The weather was predicted to be raining and clearing in the afternoon so I was prepared with all my rain and cold weather fishing gear. It was raining hard the prior evening so my main concern was water clarity. The Lower Sacramento River rainbows are know to get tempermental and closed mouthed with any change of water condition, mainly change in flow and water clarity. The Lower Sacramento River is more of a tailwater river up around Redding but can be affected by recent rain storms. I just hoped the conditions would find the river in fishable condition.

I met Don Steffa in Grass Valley and we drove to Redding and Don told me about fishing for large mouth bass and strippers in the Delta. He spent a lot of years in the Stockton area. Steve also lives in Stockton and has spent a lot of time chasing fish in the Delta. When we first crossed the Lower Sac in Red Bluff it was running brown and looked blown out. I kept my fingers crossed that we would have fishable water clarity in the upper river by the Posse Grounds. We arrived at The Fly Shop in Redding and met Steve at about 8:15. The shop said that the upper section was "fishable" but would be "colored up". They recomended staying up high on the river.

We decided to float from the Posse Grounds to a takeout in the "Aqua Golf" bay. This is a float of about 3 miles. Steve needed to be off the river by 4:00 as he was giving a presentation at the Fly Club in Redding that evening. Fishing with Steve and Don was spent with two friends at their best and giving each other a hard time and joking whenever they had a chance. Just as I like it!

The river was lower than I can remember and was flowing at about 3200 cfs. As it turned out the water was off color and murky green. The visibility was about 1 1/2' to 2 feet. This meant we pretty much had to get our flies in front of their noses to get the fish interested. We rigged up with rubber leg stones or other more attractor flies and ran small mayflies behind them. We hit the river and gave it a go. Even with these conditions we caught some beautiful rainbows with deep red lateral lines. We also lost a few nice ones. But as we all know that's fishing. We saw one other drift boat on the river and had the river to ourselves except for some wading anglers at the Posse Ground riffle. The day turned out to be beautifull with a few drizzles but what was strange is that almost everytime it started drizzling we were in the full sunshine. When it would cloud over the drizzle would stop. Go figure! I had my raincoat on for a total of no more than 15 minutes the whole day and that was when I was rowing accross the "Aqua Golf" bay to get to the take out.





All in all it was a great day with new friends and a fun time had by all.

A Nice Rainbow with Steve Cooper

The was a typical rainbow for the day.

High Plains Drifters

Steve Cooper works for PG&E and schedules his vacation time to do his guiding in Washington and Oregon when the conditions are best. He sets up tent camps in remote destinations and provides a camp kitchen and a couple of rafts as well as getting his clients into fish. He also does slide show presentations at Fly Fishing Clubs here in California.


Grande Ronde River - Steve guides on the Grande Ronde that flows through the high plains of Oregon and Washington. He guides the remote roadless section from Highway 129 to the confluence of the Snake River. The two day float covers a 36 mile stretch of the river that offers stunning scenery, uncrowded blue-ribbon water and fishing for small mouth bass. You can expect to fish for quality Small Mouth Bass from one to three pounds with opportunities for trophy fish up to six pounds.



Owyhee River - Steve also guides on the Owyhee River which is located in the badlands of eastern Oregon. The river is a tailwater fishery that flows from Owyhee Lake. The river is a bug factory and grows an amazing number of large Brown Trout. Steve sets up river side camps and will show you how to hook up with these trophy browns.



You can contact Steve Cooper and "High Plains Drifters" and get more information or custom design a trip at;





High Plains Drifters



3047 Sleepy Hollow Drive.



Stockton, CA 95209



209-956-1032



email: repoc3@sbcglobal.net