Yuba, Feather and Stan report

[cyama]

Well January can be very good if hit it right!! So here is a little test. Three fish a Yuba trout, a Feather Hatchery and a Feather Wild. Can you name which is which... Out of the three I think the Feather wild fish are the most fun. Multiple jumps on hookups. My buddy landed a pretty nice fish on the Stan as well. It is actually fishing well, fish are pretty big in certain sections.

[VinnySteel]

1. Feather Wild
2. Tuba
3. Hatchery

[Rossflyguy]

Biologists have tagged trackers on Yuba fish and they have found them going back and forth between the Feather and Yuba River. They've also tracked 16" fish from the Yuba into the bay. I wouldn't be surprised if that wild fish was from the Yuba. Hardest fighting mini stealhead.

[cyama]

The first photo is the hatchery fish. Their fins are usually not as clean and many times they have a big bruise on their head. I am not sure what they run into... This one fought pretty good, so I it go. The hatchery fish tend to bulldog instead of sprinting and jumping. It had a hole punched in the tail, so i guess it was coming back from the hatchery for a 2nd time.

Ross the Feather hatchery fish also explore the Yuba. There are a few spots on the Yuba where they tend to hang out.

[yubaman]

Chris,

I think the correct answer is that you are fishing too much!!! I am living vicariously through your photos. Going to the Eel in 3 weeks . . . now there are some hot fish, as well as a really good brewpub in Garberville. Two items close to my heart as well as yours.

[cyama]

Yubaman Bob,

Are you kidding I am knee deep in water restoration projects. With all this rain we are working on close to 100 units with water damage with calls coming in daily. It does pay to know a few high percentage spots where fish tend to hang out when you only have a couple of hours to fish. I was surprised you didn't say "That is one big ugly fish". I really don't like hatchery fish, but I figured that one wasn't going to be good to smoke. Have fun on the EEL. Drink a few beers for me! Should be some chromers swimming up in three weeks. Good luck and tight lines!

[Bob Loblaw]

I drove up to the Yuba yesterday and had a bad feeling at Marysville where the water was high and colored. I stopped at Hammond for a bathroom break and Dry Creek was over its banks and dumping a lot of rust colored water into the system. At the Highway 20 bridge it looked like the river was running about 15,000 cfs. Trees were floating by.

We resorted to plan B and drove up to Oroville and fished by the hatchery. I've never been steelheading but I hooked up on my third drift. I was a bit out gunned on my 5 wt Czech nymphing rod and she broke me off after a fun 5 minutes. The fish were very active in the morning, jumping all around us and moving up river, but other than myself, nobody else hooked up near us....of course everyone said "you should have been here yesterday, it was off the charts" if I had a buck for every time I heard that.

In the afternoon we headed down to the Oroville wildlife area and fished there for a few hours. Right as we were leaving I thought I'd finally got one. I had a good tussle with a decent sized fish, though I couldn't see it in the heavily colored water. As I got it to the net I realized it was the biggest sucker fish I've ever seen. 24-26 incher. At least I didn't get skunked.

Might give this steelheading thing another try.

[PV_Premier]

I drove up to the Yuba yesterday and had a bad feeling at Marysville where the water was high and colored. I stopped at Hammond for a bathroom break and Dry Creek was over its banks and dumping a lot of rust colored water into the system. At the Highway 20 bridge it looked like the river was running about 15,000 cfs. Trees were floating by.
.

The Yuba peaked out around 10K cfs at 10am yesterday. I posted a photo on the NorCal fly fishing facebook page. It was impressive to see, and much needed for the health of the river. Hopefully it happens again this coming weekend.

[Bob Loblaw]

I assume all that additional water comes down Deer Creek. Can't imagine Englebright would be releasing more than usual. It was impressive indeed.

[Jake O]

Not sure how the flush is good for the health of the system? High water years equals dead bugs and smaller hatches, low water years = big hatches. Higher water is of course good for the system but again not sure about major flushes like in excess of 5,000 cfs--there is not a lot of silt build up in the Yuba like some other rivers so again not sure how it would help the fishery. Not trying to pick a fight here just curious as to your reasoning as I have always thought and questions about how high water may or may not help the Yuba in particular. The above have been my observations over the years---no scientific data to back me up other than seeing what I see

[yubaman]

Not that much through Deer Creek. I think I saw Deer Creek top out at 3k or 4k for a brief time. That 10k flush is just what the Yuba needed. Hopefully it didn't wash away too many Skwalas.

[JasonB]

Not sure how the flush is good for the health of the system? High water years equals dead bugs and smaller hatches, low water years = big hatches. Higher water is of course good for the system but again not sure about major flushes like in excess of 5,000 cfs--there is not a lot of silt build up in the Yuba like some other rivers so again not sure how it would help the fishery. Not trying to pick a fight here just curious as to your reasoning as I have always thought and questions about how high water may or may not help the Yuba in particular. The above have been my observations over the years---no scientific data to back me up other than seeing what I see

I'm far from being the guy to do any justice (scientifically speaking) to the question you ask, but I do think that utilizing intuitive reasoning it's easy to see that we have drastically altered this river system and others. The ebb and flow of floods/runoff to the low slow trickle of fall is central to the health of any natural stream, so on the one hand I would think that anything that more closely resembles that would be good for the long term health of the system. As for the "micro" affects, like how it may affect the fishing for a few months of any given season, I'm not really sure; overall, I'm far more concerned with the long term trends and health of any stream.

I think the big question that I'd be curious to hear some more substantial data on would be how much a flow of say 10,000 cfs would do for a stream like the lower Yuba specifically. Given the fact that this stream has major dams upstream, and that, in the historical sense, 5,000-10,000 cfs is still a very minor event for a stream with that size basin; I'm not really sure just how much of an affect it has on the streams health (one way or the other). I would guess that it's helpful, but probably of fairly small consequence (pure guess here just based on what historical flows would look like).
JB

[cyama]

The last scour event was in May of 2009 at 20,000 CFS. In 2010 the fish looked like snakes.

http://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/uv?cb_00060=on&cb_00065=on&format=gif_default&site_no=11421000&period=&begin_date=2008-10-31&end_date=2010-03-31

[yubaman]

No doubt that when rocks get rolled, nymphs and larvae get killed. The Yuba gas a ton of algae in it right now from the lower flows and slower moving water. There is silt buildup in many of the wider lower flowing sections of the river. This flush will help clean that up. It is part of the natural process of the river, which we really have not seen in 4-5 years. The river has been flowing at 850cfs and less for basically the last 9 months. Mind you, at 10k, this is nothing for this river. I would be concerned with bug loss when we start seeing 20k, 30k, 40k flows that we have seen in the past. The biomass in the river is amazing. With these very low flows, virtually all of the submerged gravel are larger cobble right now. The smaller gravel has been high and dry for the most part. The bugs would be hunkered under this larger cobble, which I would guess would not be moving much at all in 10k flows.

I'm no scientist, but my guess is we'll have plenty of bugs around in the spring unless we do have that major blowout event.

[PV_Premier]

my math on saying it was good for the river rests mostly on spreading out cobble. all the 'restoration' efforts on the lower Yuba have been focused on deer creek and the area upstream of the bridge. they are putting in better spawning gravel, but its all piled up at the mouth of DC and the inside bends just below it. having some nice water move through and spread that out a bit, plus restructure some of the channels a little and hopefully expose fresh spawning gravel in other areas, will probably be good for the fishing in the long run. i'm becoming a little less optimistic about how good the skwala hatch is going to be, but i doubt the long term effects on the bug life from a single 10K CFS blow out will be much if any at all.

[PV_Premier]

I drove down to the Yuba this morning after seeing the flows drop nicely the past couple of days. However, I found them rising again this morning and the water is the color of coffee with creamer in it -- about 10" visibility. In short, if you were thinking of heading out there this weekend, maybe think again. It's raining again here in Penn Valley, which means that Deer Creek will be dumping more sediment into the river. Hopefully it gets back to reasonable clarity later this week with the forecast drier weather.