A lot of you have been hitting the Yuba lately, and I've heard that the March Brown hatch is coming along. I want to tie up some nymph patterns. What color and general size are the nymphs?
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"Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught."
JT, up on the yuba the march browns are fairly big i think, probably like a 12-14 someone please correct me if im wrong. Not sure on color but my favorite color is brown. Got some fish on a size18 PT up there on friday and a bunch of fish on a skwala nymph, and some more on psycho nymph.
Matt's right, they were brown, maybe a little bit of a dark brown. We even saw a few that were black. I would say a size 14. A guy we met said he pumped the stomach of a fish he caught, and all that was in there were pmd's. So make sure you have some pmd's.
A lot of you have been hitting the Yuba lately, and I've heard that the March Brown hatch is coming along. I want to tie up some nymph patterns. What color and general size are the nymphs?
A size 12 or 14 PT will do the trick. Like whippersnapper said, we talked to a guy who pumped a stomach and saw nothing but PMD emergers. We saw a lot of PMD's all day long and march browns later in the day. I don't think the fish are keying on the march browns just yet. Like we said, there were risers almost all day long but they were not taking the adult form.
My info is a little different. I was probably a little lower on the river than the other guys. The fish were really going after the March Browns and PMD's on the surface ( and I mean really going after them) for about an hour and a half. I did throw a PMD emerger as well but had no luck with what I was tossing.
I tried a PMD dry, PMD Soft hackle and March Brown dries where we were. I only got one grab and I'm not sure if it was the PMD dry of the soft hackle. The hit came the instant it hit the water but I'm guessing it was the soft hackle.
I was fishing with Emerger Cliff on Saturday and he was raving about the Yuba quite a bit, so I had to hit the Yuba the next day. Hiked up above the bridge until I got to the rock wall. There were only a couple of guys fishing the riffle, so I decided to give it a few casts. Five casts in fish on. Nice little 16 incher. It slammed a size 12 March Brown emerger. Pretty easy tie. Tail is brown zlon, body is march brown antron and it has two natural CDC feathers for the wing. Wing goes all the way back to the tail. It floats low on the surface. Had four more grabs, but missed them all.
The best part of the day was watching the guy below me. He was like 65, wet wading and just hammering the fish. After landing about five fish he finally snapped one off and headed back to shore. I had to find out what this guy was using. I went over and talked to him, and he quickly showed me the secret fly. It was a size 16 deer hair caddis. It looked like an x caddis with no tail. He was using 6x tippet on his four weight!!! The guy was super cool and said he's been fishing the river for 35 years. A true Yuba legend. It was like talking to AK Best in person. He also had this super cool low riding skwala dry. He said he was hammering the skwalas on Saturday. He said the key is low riding sparse flies and light tippet. He got back on the water and was doing the Yuba dance in no time. Fighting big fish and trying to balance on the slippery rocks.
Nice fishing with you Emerger we have to hit the Yuba soon.
The pleasure was all mine Otter. Wish I could have joined you on the Yuba Sunday, sounds like a fun day. Let's plan a time when we can both get up there soon.
