Originally Posted by
yubaman
Seeing that flows are down around 1,000 cfs, I was very anxious to see what the Yuba looked like, and of course, fish as well. As seems to be par for the fishing their these days, I fished for 5 hours and caught 2 small fish. One was very skinny. I have had the same type of results the last 3 trips, and in talking with others, seems to be about the norm. I took two rods with me and fished both on top and subsurface. I fished my new 5 weight Winston B-IIIX Plus today, and I gotta say, I love this rod.
I did not see any salmon yet either. None even staging in the deeper holes. The egg bite looks to be another late one this year. The water is gin clear, and the river looks to be in good condition.
It seems like the fish population is pretty sparse right now, after the floods. I turned lots of rocks, and did not see any bugs, but what would you expect after last winter. There were a number of stonefly shucks on the rocks, great to see, and a decent midge hatch in the morning. Much of the streambed is featureless at this flow, just long straight slots, with a short riffle every 500 yards or so. The inseam at the island is nearly dry at these flows!
It will be interested to see how many salmon come up this year, and if the larger trout and steelhead follow them in from somewhere else. I fear that the fish population is at a low point after the drought and flood, and might need a couple of years to regenerate. It might be time to give the Yuba a break for awhile. This is my uneducated observation, which I hope is incorrect, but I fear is not.
It was a lot nicer to fish in 73 degree weather versus 103 degrees we has the last couple of trips!!!
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