Dredging the Feather & Mouth of Yuba

Well, it's about time. They've finally started to dredge the river right at the Yuba City boat ramp. The parking lot and road coming in is packed solid with giant cranes and back hoes bigger than I've ever seen. One of the local boys watching the show said yesterday the huge back hoe went across the Feather and up a ways in the Yuba.

The plan is to pull out tons of sand from the river bottom and pump it into the sewer ponds on the Marysville side of the river. From there they'll find a place to use it for fill.

After this they'll be moving upstream to the Live Oak boat ramp and doing the same there,

I don't know if this is a good or bad thing at the start of salmon season here as it may disrupt the spawning migration upstream.

Anyway, with the low water flows this past year the river around here is shallower than I've ever seen it. And, don't even think about launching your boat around here for a while.
Tony

Sure hope we get some early rains this year....

I went down to the boat ramp again today to watch the activity of the dredging and everything is gone on the Yuba City side of the river. Over on the Marysville side there is still lots of equipment and pipe and pumps. So obviously they're getting ready and must be waiting for permits or F&G to give them their blessing.

They did mention yesterday they were going to dredge out the ramp up at Live Oak but didn't say when.

Jim and I are heading up to the rock dam tomorrow to look for some stripers and we'll take a look around Live Oak to see if anything is going on up that way.
Tony

We just got back from the Feather throwing flies at stripers. There was another boat there ahead of us and he was tossing rubber worms and knocking them pretty good. The fish all looked really good. But once the sun came up things shut down quickly.

On the way back we stopped at a couple of spots and Jim picked up a beautiful smallmouth that was twice the size of any they had taken down at Steamboat Slough.

Back at the ramp Jim took a quick spin over to the mouth of the Yuba and said it is too shallow to navigate unless you're in a canoe or a kayak.

It sounds like they're going to be dredging all over around here. In the paper this morning they were talking about the dredging being done at the Colusa ramp and is ready for use.
Tony