Lower Yuba 7/31

[yubaman]

I fished the river from up near the narrows, all the way to down below the island. Massive, massive changes as I had noted before. The wade fishing above the bridge on the public access has all but disappeared, as you will not be able to hike past the end of the quarry any longer. So around the first turn, there is a good riffle, and that's the end of the show. You run into rock walls now and the river is right up against them. The private side has a few good riffles, but is mostly long, straight and deep runs with very little structure to it. The changes upriver, where I thought the best river conditions and fishing were, are incredible. Not for the better either. I saw very little change in river conditions from 4000 cfs to 2600 cfs, and it does not look like much will change when it goes down to 1500 cfs ( if it does?) in the fall. It seems like the river will be largely a drift boat game for awhile. It is amazing how much riverbank has vanished, and how wide the river has become. Lots of good long slicks for dry fly fishing when the bugs return if you can get something out there about 80 yards!

As you can imagine after the large flows, the rocks are clean, with almost no nymphs hiding under the rocks. As is mentioned in another post, my results were the same, a couple of 8", first or second year fish. The picture here is down at the island, on the inseam. Those bushes in the background used to be the bank for river left! The river has moved about 50 yards into the island. As well, the drop-off into the water used to be flat. Now the bank has about a 4' drop into the water.

The river is a completely new animal for sure. Hopefully some gravel gets pushed around with lower flows to create some different structure, but most of the smaller stuff is way up where the high water mark was during last winter. Much of the streambed is now made up of large, heavy cobble.

One thing I found out about myself today . . . when I was younger, I was much more patient working the river on days like today. As I have aged, I realized my patience seems to diminish exponentially when the temperature gets over 90 degrees. How can this be?!

The Yuba always seems to recover much quicker than we would think from these events. We'll hope for the best.

[VinnySteel]

I think you hit it on the head. It is insane how different things are out there. My buddy and I got out there last week and kicked up some rocks with a seine in the water to examine the bug life. A decent amount of small size 20-22 mayflies, a few caddis, and that's about it. I was hoping to see a few big stones crawling around but saw nothing. The fish are small, bugs are small and the only thing big is the water! That being said, the river appears very healthy after the massive flush that it got. Water clarity was insane with absolutely no sediment or snot in the riverbed. The salmon should have a hey day with all the new gravel beds.

[PV_Premier]

TahoeJoe and I floated it with his drift boat on Saturday morning. Fishing was pretty slow but it was a great way to get a perspective on all the changes in the rivers' condition. We hooked a handful of the little guys throughout the trip, and toward the end of the float I got one on a rubberlegs that was ~16", but pretty lanky. Still, it was very nice to see at least one decent sized fish.