Found a Fly Box on the Yuba

[El Rey]

I braved the heat to fish the Yuba today. I found a small six-compartment, clear plastic fly box filled with nice flies. If you can identify the distinctive fly shop logo on the box, or at least the name of the town, you can claim it, and I will mail it to you. And no, it's not Kiene's or that shop in Redding.

BTW, fishing was spectacular today. I've been waiting for this kind of day for a long time. Lots of bugs on the water, and many, many fish feeding on the surface. Caught and landed four on dries, LDR'ed two, and had several refusals.

Cheers,
Harlan

[dryflychico]

Mind if I ask what you were throwing?

Was there last night and didn't have much luck, caught 1 nice 16" but that was the only take I got all night and just lucky enough to get him but other than that I only saw one other fish all night and it was pretty much in the dark on the walk out on the far side of the river. Lots of bugs but nothing really coming to the surface.

Just curious what you got them up on.

If you want to PM me that is also fine.

Thanks!

[El Rey]

I guess I should elaborate and ammend. Most of the fish were feeding just under the surface on emergers. I did get two hookups on a small parachute Adams on the surface early on. Then there were two older gents sharing the same run. They were catching fish with a non-beadhead PT dressed and fished like a dry. I had already switched to a dark Cahill as the March Browns appeared, so I added a PT dropper dressed with flotant which hung close to the surface. That was the ticket, but I still caught fish on both.

The usual caveats: that worked for me at that time. You never know what will work on the Yuba. I tried many different flies until I happened upon the right combination, with major help from some friendly advice. In the past I have caught fish on an EC caddis when no caddis were appearing, but the Adams is still my go-to fly. I almost always fish dries--can't bring myself to throw an indicator with nymphs and weights, though it might mean more hookups.

There aren't many secrets on the Yuba, so I hope this helps. I'll probably be there either Sunday or Monday to see what works then.

Good luck,
Harlan

[dryflychico]

That makes sense. I only saw 2 fish hit the surface all night. One to my dry fly and one on the walk out. I should have been dropping something in the surface film, I haven't fished the Yuba much but do remember always having an emerger dropper from my dry.

Actually pretty happy with my one fish. Probably only 20 minutes of light left and literally thinking to myself, damn am I going to get skunked and not even see a single fish tonight. As I was thinking this I was having a hard time seeing my fly, a second later I found my fly and got a subtle take, bam, fish on. My labs were stoked they don't like it when they don't get to kiss a fish. Obviously I am a little rusty at the whole fishing thing; this damn thing ran down stream on me, so I take it to the reel and start working it back up and all of a sudden I can feel my reel shaking lose, came about 2 seconds from losing it into the drink, had to tighten it up and not lose the fish, got lucky, kept the reel on and kept the fish on. Good times had by all, including the labs!

Funny how that one strike, one fish, changed my whole night.

Not to mention I didn't get a gun pulled on me and talked to a couple other nice people.