Two of us went fishing on the Lower Yuba yesterday. After a good start in the morning (3 fish to 12", one each on a Brown RL stone, olive poopah, and tangerine bead), things slowed down late morning and through the early afternoon, and so we went exploring.
The water is clear and the bottom looks clean - good salmon water. But after scouting water throughout most of the river below Parks Bar bridge and talking to lots of folk, it's safe to say the Salmon are missing from this stretch of the river. Are they all above Parks Bar, or are they stacked up below Daguerre, ready to make their move; I don't know.
They are both above parks bar and below daguere. Salmon below diguere seem to be pretty beat up, don't believe we have had a fresh push of fish up the system yet. The water on the feather is to warm so the larger portion fo fish seem to be moving up the sacramento river system. The fish that are in the yuba should be moving up and dropping down in the comming weeks---it's still early.
Have also heard that there are a couple really low spots below hallwood boulevard that a jet boat cannot even get through at this point--Flows are around 700CFS and the higher water this last winter REALLY pushed some gravel around---Islands that use to exist are now gone, areas that use to be just a small trickle running parallel to the main river channel are now the main river channel with the old river channell being dried up, etc. Haven't seen this much movement in the river bottom in some time.
-- Edited by drifter on Monday 19th of September 2011 01:07:38 PM
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all of a man's addictions end and begin when he learns to fly fish
Your theory makes a lot of sense to me. With the level and duration of flows the Yuba experienced this year, there was surely enough force to alter the river bed, creating new channels and new mounding, that at least for now, is blocking entry to new arrivals at what are now much lower flows. Perhaps we could use a little rain to raise the river and release the fresh fish from the lower river.
Anyway, I will be back on the Yuba in a couple of weeks and look forward to the changes.
