Yuba Skwala Dries

iamamultitasker · Senior Member

Yuba Skwala Dries

Matt R · Senior Member

Sure what the heck, looks good, give it a whirl!!!
Go check out the skwalas cool bugs very freindly.

SK60 · Senior Member

I would tie some with a black body and legs-they are a dark fly, about 1-<1.5" long, 0.25" or less in body width, narrow wings

iamamultitasker · Senior Member

I would tie some with a black body and legs-they are a dark fly, about 1-<1.5" long, 0.25" or less in body width, narrow wings

Good advice. It is always smart to carry the same fly in black as sometimes that's the only thing that works.

However, all of the pics I located of Yuba skwalas showed a significant amount of gold/yellow visible from the underside. Does anyone here have some pics of them that they are holding back?

Cole Davis · Senior Member

Those look pretty good to me. Steve is right alot of times those suckers are really dark. I used to tie them with too much olive when many of them you see are more golden stone/olive....Anyways splitting hairs there. That looks like a good pattern though. Etha wing on that bad boy??

iamamultitasker · Senior Member

Thanks for the feedback Cole.

The wing material was given to me and is called "Perfect Cut Wings."

The top of the abdomen and thorax of the fly is dark olive/brown, but you can't see that from the picture as it's covered by the deer hair and wing material. My experience, however, is that the top of the dry fly is far less important than the bottom. Also, I haven't caught a fish on dries in over 5 years (didn't fish for 4 of them) so I'm excited about giving this a shot.

I am going to tie up some black ones and hope I have all the bases covered.

Otter · Senior Member

The pattern should work. The skwalas on the Yuba are a yellow olive. Just remember the Yuba fish are very picky. Once you cast at an area a few times you should either move on or try a different fly pattern. Mercer has a good skwala dry, but leave off or cut off the big indicator on top.

Tie up some low floating caddis like an x caddis or x2 caddis and bwos for variety. They are also some big gray drakes out. Don't forget to tie up various sizes of soft hackles.

Otter · Senior Member

Photos of Yuba skwalas. The hatch has been slow, but should pick up with this weeks warmer weather...

iamamultitasker · Senior Member

Great pics Chris.

Looks like the underside of the thorax is closer to mottled yellow while the abdomen is yellow/olive/orange. I'm going to use a pen to mark some of the skwalas I've tied with a little bit of orange.

BTW, how'd you guys do on the Yuba last weekend?

iamamultitasker · Senior Member

Just wanted to close this thread with a report. This skwala pattern worked pretty well on the lower section of the Yuba near Sycamore Ranch. I landed 2 good fish on it and had one refusal on a relatively slow day.