This last Saturday (July 9th) I guided a clinic on the North Yuba. The subject was short line nymphing technique for pocket water. There were 17 participants, and (fortunately) I had three good assistants. A couple of us fished the river on Friday, to...er...test the river out before the clinic. Well, you know what I mean.

Anyway, on Friday we caught a good number of fish, mostly on nymphs. However, the fish were mostly smallish, in the 6-12" category. I did manage to land one beautiful 14" rainbow (a good-sized specimen for this river) late in the day. The biggest producer was a Hare's Ear, size 14, with Bill's Stick Caddis and the Poxyback Stone close in pursuit. Darker flies such as Prince Nymphs did catch some, but were drubbed by the lighter imitations.

On Saturday, the clinic was held at Milepost 26.3, where there is a nice grassy area above the river for parking and off-stream instruction, and a good section of pocket water for the on-stream portion of the program. After everyone had a chance to demonstrate what they learned, we broke into groups and began fishing the river up and down stream. Everyone caught fish, but again virtually all of them were small.

There are a lot of miners on this river now--many more than in the past. For example, a claim owned by one person until last year is now owned by a mining club with the result that there are many more people digging and dredging in the claim area, totally blocking all fishing access to a once-pristine part of the stream. This type of situation is putting a lot of heavy pressure on the ecosystem of the river, changing the stream bottom drastically and decimating the bug population and native vegetation. I wonder whether this has something to do with the significant reduction in size of the average fish taken on flies. It's also possible that with the extremely high water this year, many of the larger fish were carried downstream.

Notwithstanding its problems, the North Yuba remains a beautiful local stream, in places much like a rain forest (if you know where to go). In particular, try the water just below and above Herrington's Resort in Sierra City. And bring your camera. As of now, the principal bugs for surface activity are small caddis and a blizzard of Golden Stones.

Carpe pesce...Bill Carnazzo