It's Back On
For the past week or so things have been blown out on both of my favorite rivers, the SAC and the Feather. The Feather was blown out because of all of the run off coming down the Yuba.(20K cfs last Wednesday).
Well yesterday I had to go check things out here in Yuba City and I'm glad to say that the Yuba has dropped and cleared somewhat which in turn makes the Feather much more fishable. While sitting in my truck at Mosquito beach watching the water, sure enough there was striper action right under my feet. A striper has surfaced and was chasing bait with his back out of water no more than fifty feet in front of me. And this is 10:00 in the morning and I didn't bring a rod along to fish. Twice more in the next few minutes there were explosions on the surface. HOT Damn! They're here!
I talked earlier in the morning with a buddy of mine who was fishing over on the Sac and he said they were going great ,,,,,,,,,,on bait. "The river has started to come down but was till pretty muddy". Well, I had to see for myself and I headed over to where he was fishing and quickly spotted him in his boat.
Sure enough, he had done well, and sure enough the SAC was still running muddy and high with a tree limbs and debris floating down. But, was it really THAT muddy?
This morning I had to get back out there and find out for sure. We launched a little after 5:00AM and motored upstream several miles to our usual starting point along one of the SAC's many rip-rap walls. Working the flies as close to the bank as we dare we soon had our first hook-up. A nice strong 4 pounder. Soon another, and some snags, and then another, and another.
Yes the water is dirty, and brown, but it's not that bad. Visibility is maybe 18". I couldn't say 2 feet.
We worked our way downstream throwing the largest Chartruese/white clousers we had in 3/0 and 4/0 about 4"-6" in length. With the big flies it made it better to get their attention. Because of the poor visibility in the water small flies just wouldn't be seen.
With all of this new water came a lot of new snags and I had lost six of my best flies. Soon I was trying all sorts of other patterns and loosing them too. Now I had to borrow one of Bill's creations. Yes, he was catching fish too on them, and now I had to try something new. His were big and chartruese,,,,,,, and yellow,,,,,,,,and red,,,,,,,and,,,,,, by God we continued catching fish.
We covered lots of water to find schools but once we did we repeated our drift and usually picked up another fish or two in the same area.
Surprise of the day was when Bill hooked up to another fish on his 3/0 clouser and it turned out to be a shad. Hit it exactly like a striper and fought almost as hard but on a 9 weight rod it was a bit of over-kill.
We ended to morning with 18 striped bass up to 10 pounds. Only two were undersize,,,,,, and one shad.
Muddy water or not, if you don't go you'll never know. This high water last week has done nothing but help bring more stripers and shad into the river system and things should really start turning on in the next couple of weeks.
TONY BUZOLICH
Feather River Fly
Yuba City, CA.
(530) 790-7180
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