Yuba Over 6000 CFS ?

[Tony Buzolich]

Yesterday I got out on the river to go chase some stripers and was surprized to see the water flowing so high. Both rivers, the Feather and the Yuba were running over 6000 CFS.
When I moved over to the Yuba it wasn't the clear water I'm used too. It was a dirty green and cold. The Yuba was running about 50-51 degrees, but if you moved across to the west side on the Feather it was 57-58 degrees. Guess where I fished mostly.

Both rivers were marking lots of fish that I'm sure are shad. Scattered groups everywhere but I didn't even try for them. With that big full moon I'm sure what stripers were around spawned all night and weren't very hungry during the day. One did come home for dinner though.

Is it the snow melt already that is raising the water releases?
Tony

[Woodman]

It's the beginning of snowmelt, inflow to New Bullards Bar is around 5000cfs. In addition there's a need to make in the reservoirs for snow melt. For example Oroville is at 95% of capacity, Shasta at 96%, Folsom at 85%. (See link.) Flows are likely going to stay high through the spring and into the irrigation season. May get higher if warm weather or a late warm storm comes through.

cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/rescond.pdf

[Jim@293]

It is possible that those high flows may also be coming from upstream at Spaulding. There are problems at Spaulding that is forcing them to release water into the Yuba. A big slide took out the South Yuba Pipe and the Powerhouse 1 and 2 are down for major repairs so there is no water going to Rollins Lake or Scott's Flat Lake. The repairs will take until August.

https://yubanet.com/regional/lake-sp...ak-discovered/.

It's going to be interesting downstream this summer.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Sometimes they get afraid of a big spring tropical rain storm so they like to keep the reservoirs a little low.

[Joshua]

There have also been talks about pulse flows out of the dams to help the migrating salmon smolts. They want to mimic natural flows from this time of year to help flush the smolts downstream and away from predators. Fingers crossed it works!