Yuba Report 1/15

[Adam Grace]

MSP (Mike Putman) and I fished the Yuba this past Thursday, sorry for the sorta late report. We enjoyed a nice day on the river and so did the other 10-12 fishermen we saw that day. The fishing pressure is fairly high and most people were above the bridge. I started the day out around 9:30, nymphing with a BWO nymph and a midge pupa with no luck. Later as I came across a nice run that looked very good for a streamer attack, so I switched to a zonker type of fly, after putting on a couple large splitshot on my long leader attached to my floating line a gave the run a good sweeping. Halfway through the run a nice 13” trout WHACKED the hell out of my streamer and jump-started my heart. It fought well and got the stripe off of my back, which make me smile. Here’s a picture of that fish:



Mike was determined to catch one on a dry and pounded a nice little slick above to no avail; here he is casting to the spot where he saw a couple of rises:


You can see that just in this one picture there are two other fisherman in the immediate area, there were more fisherman than I expected to see. Everybody was nice and gave us our space and did not crowd others, I find that most fly fisherman are like that…… I feel proud to be part of such a courteous and respectable group of fisherman.



Here he is with "Dog Boy"


Later on in the day, as we walked back to our cars we noticed a few rises in the pool right above the bridge. We noticed only a few BWO’s emerging and possibly a few March Browns, mayflies much larger than the BWO’s. Mike tried to fool some fish, here he is casting out for them:







This is my favorite out of the bunch.


Here's Mike being funny about the lack of success


Mike and I looked for skwallas through most of the day and we only saw a couple above the bridge but as we walked back down to the bridge we saw a bunch more in the willows right above the bridge. They are coming out but there are definitely not out in force yet. I want to go back in a week to try skwalla fishing again, by that time they should be fairly thick.... I hope Here’s a few pics of some skwallas for your viewing enjoyment, don’t get too embarrassed though…one of the pictures is a little risqué


They needed to get a room! lol


Check ou the underbelly color and the nice egg sack.





After lunch we snooped around below the bridge, only seeing a few other fisherman. Towards the evening we pounded the banks with skwalla dries, I used a dropper an caught this fish:



The lower left jaw was all messed up from a previous catch, but it fought like crazy.

Mike fished above me and hooked and landed 2 fish on his magical carpet skwalla pattern. Unfortunately he was too far away for me to get a picture but he took a couple of his famous “hand” shots and hopefully he will be posting them shortly.

So by the end of the day we each caught two fish, nothing great but at least we didn’t get skunked. I think we would have done better if we both concentrated on solely nymphing but we were both happy to catch them our own way.

To sum up the important fishing info: There was very little visible bug activity. We saw a few skwallas but nothing too impressive or worth getting very excited about. Maybe soon the skwalla hatch will be exciting (crossing my fingers.) Mike and I both saw the nymph fishermen do pretty good, but nothing really impressive. The skwallas should be in full force sometime soon and maybe on a cloudier day the BWO’s might come off stronger, not sure though.

Thanks to those who sent me messages, next time I go I will get there earlier to get a nice spot on a good nymphing run and I will concentrate on nymphing more to increase my numbers, but I will be very excited to get a hard pull on a swung streamer and I will jump all over any chance for dry fly action.

Good luck if you plan on going out there in the near future. - Adam