I had a good friend, who I fish with some and goes on our annual  Montana, trip pass away this last Friday.  I was pretty bummed and felt like a day to myself, so I ran up to the Yuba to fish and pass some memories for the day.

It was the first time I have been up there since the flows went down and WOW!  There have been some major changes in the river as a lot of gravel got pushed around.  The 2 major redd areas are very, very different and not the greatest spawning habitat anymore.

Secondly, I'm not sure I agree with some of the other opinions going around regarding the Salmon run.  Now, I am not a fisheries biologist by any stretch, but the opinion seems to be that the run is late.  I think the run is just going to be very, very small this year.  Fish are already spawned and dead on the bank.  Redds have been built.  There are just so few redds and salmon, it's amazing.  The trout that I caught were all small  as well.  Largest fish was about 10".  I have noticed this since about June.  I don't know what happenes to the big boys.  Perhaps many of them lived their span, perhaps the biomass reduction from the high water did not leave adequate food supply . . . I just don't know.  It's similar to what happened after the 2005 high water year.  The fish got snakey with a larger population of small fish.  The river recovered grandly within 2 years back then.  Hopefully the Feather and Lower Sac get better runs than the Yuba, it's scary.

The other tough factor is the gin clear water.  It's just very easy for the fish to spot you coming on the bank.  I'm sure many scatered upon my arrival.  Given the circumstances of the weekend, I just wasn't into fishing as much as I usually am on the river. 

When driving out, I noticed 5-6 people fishing about 1/4-1/2 mile abnove the bridge in the closed section.  A quick call to Cal-Tip hopefully helped that situation out.