I made a Lower Yuba run with Alastair on the 20th. I was amazed how much the river had cleared up in a week. Visibility was around 5 feet. As you can see on the flow reports, it is still running very high. Wade access is very much reduced, but like anywhere, you observe and define the feeding lanes, seams and slack current areas and the fish are holding in these areas. They're just in different places with these flows.
We did try to cross in an area where we thought it might be possible, but after realizing that with one slip we make it down to Knight's Landing by lunchtime, we gave it up.
It was a lot of work, but we did get into some fish. As a reward for our efforts, we treated ourselves to our favorite stop at the Mighty Viking in Yuba City afterwards or some cold rehydration followed by an ample serving of really hot Chicken Wings. There wings here are very, very good. They do have over 50 beers on tap here.
There was a mayfly hatch which came off in the afternoon, but we did not see any Skwala's out and flying. There were a few slashing emerger rises in the morning, but nothing after that. It was a subsurface game this day.
I was lucky enough to hook into a clipped adipose Feather steelie who turned up the wrong river and another one of those Yuba frying pan specials whose body is so much bigger than the head. The steelie was a great take, just a big turn and wave after he took the nymph. Here are a couple of pictures.
Does anyone have an opinion regarding how the current flows and recent warm, dry weather might impact our little Skwala friends? I was hoping to try my luck next month, though until this morning, I thought maybe I would be too late, but apparently the little buggers are still not hatching. And I admit, 3,000 cfs is a little daunting for me. Any thoughts as to whether the flows might be reduced?
As for the flows, I have heard they are going to be around 3K for some time, with all of the water at bullards, and all of the snow pack in the Sierras. However, you never really know what the water guys are going to do, just monitor the CDEC website to keep up to date on the flows.
As for the Skwallas, typically it's a late January, early to mid February hatch. It's really hard to pin down when they are going to be hatching, it seems like the last couple years its been a more sporadic hatch, i.e., hatching one day, and then not the next, wheras in years pasts it was a little more reliable. Really, it's all about the weather. Typically any day around 65 degrees is going to put off some type of hatch, although, its not always a given. If you can find a stretch where its going to be warm for a few days, I would suggest going, and look for the bugs to come off hard sometime after 10am.
I havn't heard of any reports of large hatched coming off yet, nor have I been yet to see the river lately myself. It will be interesting to see how the hatch comes off this year with all the high water we had this winter--my guess is it might be a rather dismal year for the skwalas (when compared with years past anyways), but you never know unless you go!
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all of a man's addictions end and begin when he learns to fly fish
Thanks for the advice regarding the Skwallas. I'll try to make a run up there one of the next two weekends, and if I do, I will let you know what I find.
