Ellis Lake, Yuba goldfields, Yuba River

Spring Break: Day 1 and Day 2

The first two days of spring break have been fantastic. The warm-water fish are definitely awake and hungry.

Day 1: Popper Power
The first day of spring break was spent fishing the Goldfields and the fishing was phenomenal. The Yuba River was sitting at a very low 590 CFS and was gin clear. This usually means the river fishing is tough as nails and extremely technical. I didn’t want to devote the entire day to the river so I spent most of my time hiking around looking for new ponds.

 Monster Bluegillz

The day started with a streamer but after seeing a few bass close to the bank and near the surface I switched to a popper. That little froggy popper caught me fish all day until the little last bit of light. Although the pop and sit technique worked well my favorite was the pop after pop explosion. The fish weren’t very big but they took that popper with no mercy. Heart-stopping action!
This was a fantastic way to start the break.

Say “Ah”

Day 2: No Bait
The second day of spring break I fished Ellis Lake. The bass weren’t very active for some reason, possibly due to the small cold front the night before. I fished the north lake first and landed a nice catfish but after covering quite a bit of water with no takes I decided to see if the south lake was fishing better.

Ellis Lake Cat on a fly

Once I arrived on the south lake I finally hooked a bass that I immediately lost. My next few casts I get a take and its a big one. Arm wrenching! The fish took me all the way into my backing. I couldn’t tell what it was. Ten pound bass? Ten pound catfish? It couldn’t be a carp because I didn’t see any signs of carp in the area. Once I got it close enough, its a carp! On a streamer of all flies. She probably mistook the streamer for a crayfish.

Ellis Lake Streamer Carp

I got quite a bit of intel on the Feather River so that’s where I’ll be tomorrow. My fingers are crossed on landing a steelhead.

Ellis Lake, Yuba goldfields

Fly Fishing For Bass: Entry #3 – It Has Begun

Location: Ellis Lake and Yuba Goldfields
Time: Afternoon
Weather: Warm with dailies around 65-70 degrees
Water Temp: High 50s Low 60s

There has been a warming trend going around the valley with temperatures near a consistent 65-70 degrees. This has been going on for about three weeks now and I believe it has woken up the fish. The bass are slowly making their way into the prespawn mode. It’s starting to get windy which means spring turnover time.

The daylight hours are now around 11 hours, therefore there is some truth to the correlation between bass activity and number of daylight hours. Most of the fish I have found were on shallow flats less than 6ft deep. No bass on beds yet.

I have been using a purple bunny leech with lead eyes. The bunny leech has been working very well and I find that purple has always been the color I’ve caught the most bass with. I tied one with some flash-a-bou and one without and it seems that the flash got more grabs than no flash. The sample size was small, therefore I will continue to keep testing.
Now that the prespawn bite is on I will begin focusing on being able to catch bass more consistently.

I will be working on:

-Fly patterns that work best
-Fishing different depths with different sinking tips or line
-Locating fish
-Finding when the topwater action starts
-Learning how the wind is my friend
-Figuring out the best retrieve

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