Yuba River report and info

[yubaman]

First of all, condolences and sorrow for the information which came out yesterday. I am so sorry to hear the information and the ending of a legacy in Sacramento. Circumstances in life can change things so quickly.

I ran up to fish the Yuba yesterday and I am going to spew out a bunch of information to assist others fishing between now and December 1. I had not been up there in over a year with all of the high water from last winter, spring and summer. The closure of the Hammonton Road has all but eliminated the wade fishermen at this time of year, with the section above the bridge currently closed for the salmon spawn. Apparently the resolution to close this area came from Yuba County because of the constant criminal activity taking place over there, nothing to do with the OHV traffic. The gate will be closed for at least another 15 months. I can attest that humping this distance as a 63 year old who is 3 months away from knee replacement surgery in 90 degree temperature, had me hitting the water bottle a bit. Be prepared to do some walking for the next 60 days. It is no problem to cross the river in numerous places at these flows. The current access points seem to be Hammon Grove, Sycamore Ranch or parking under the south side Hwy. 20 bridge and humping down.

I did not see any active salmon reds yet, but did see one salmon in a run. The spawn looks to be a way off unless they have gone upriver, above the bridge.

I parked at Hammon Grove and worked my way upriver to the island. I do not usually fish too much down here. There have been enormous changes to the river down here from a year ago, some from natures flows of the past 12 months, some from man. SRYCL is engaged in a large project down here to create rearing habitat for trout, steelhead and salmon. There has been a LOT of material pushed around by heavy equipment to create this, including a new side channel to feed water to this area. I spoke with some biologists who happened to be out monitoring much of the work done from last year. They said that 315 salmon had already been caught on camera passing through Daguerre, and were very happy with this number. Apparently this is a good bump in numbers versus the same time last year.

Onto the fishing . . . I usually find this to be a slow time of year for fishing on the Yuba. A few midges came off in the morning, that was about it. I fished one rod with nymphs, another with dries. The nymph fishing was slow for me. I went through about 10 different bugs and got 1 smolt. I fished hoppers with my dry rig, and that is what the fish were after. The hoppers did pretty well on top. No fish of great size, they were all in the 12”-15” size, but they were healthy, hard fighting Yuba fish.

I am interested to see how the Yuba fishes this coming spring! I hope this helps those of you thinking about getting up to the Yuba.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Thanks yubaman,

A fantastic post of good info.



The lower Yuba River is a little jewel of a fishery in our area.