Yuba goldfields, Yuba River

Indian Summer Days On The Yuba

by Matt
Couldn’t Believe How Bright It Was Today

The Yuba is pretty much fishing the same as it was this summer probably a little worse due to the lowered flows. From my experience fishing the Yuba over the past few years, I’ve found that Indian summer days are the most difficult conditions to fish the Yuba. Something about cold mornings and hot afternoons put these fish down in a bad mood.

Poor reports have kept anglers away from the Yuba these past few weeks. The fishing is slow and the bugs aren’t doing much. The fish are still around and willing to eat but they’ll make you work hard to catch them. It’s not a numbers game this time of year.

Although the salmon are around in particular runs and tail-outs, I must have counted less than fifteen today. The water is too warm for them to start dropping eggs so it’ll be a few weeks before the egg-bite starts here.
How warm is the water? I wet waded the entire day. The water is not cold enough.

I started below the bridge pitching nymphs with no indicator. After going through several different flies and fishing the run for about four hours with no takes I gave up nymphing. It was streamer time.

Gin Clear

I like fishing streamers because I can cover a lot of water and find the most aggressive fish. When nymph fishing I feel stagnant and slow. By the time I’m done fishing a run, several hours have passed with not even a nibble. Very frustrating.
Streamer fishing is the most hook-up/time efficient way for me to fish during tough conditions. My Hero Sculpin always does the trick.

My day ended with four hook ups but none landed. They felt like two nice size fish and two smaller ones. Not too shabby. I’ll get them next time. My recommendation is not use 8# mono as your leader off your versileader when streamer fishing. Its too flimsy and the slightest bit of slack will lose you a hooked fish.

I’m going to wait until fall truly gets here before I head back the the Yuba.

Yuba Goldfields
I am sad to say that largemouth bass season is officially over for me. After fishing Secret Pond for a bit, I found no takers. The fish are usually closer to the bank but they have migrated down and become lethargic.

Little Truckee River, Truckee River, Yuba River

Truckee River In A Drought No Doubt

by Matt
Truckee River Canyon

Of all the rivers and streams in California that have been hit by the drought, the Truckee River has been hit the hardest. I don’t understand how a long and fairly large river with several high sierra reservoirs plus Lake Tahoe feeding it gets reduce to barely a trickle. This trip was my second time fishing the Truckee River. I was at the right place at the wrong time.

Truckee River Drought

Truckee River
Waking up at 4am to get to the Truckee wasn’t too bad. These indian summer days are great in the mornings but terrible in the afternoon. The drive from HWY 20 to I80 wasn’t that bad either. An easy and scenic 2 hour drive from Yuba City.

Hirschdale Bridge

The Truckee flows are at 100 CFS below Boca Reservoir; bare minimum. This section of the river was even lower last year. Above Boca Reservoir the river is flowing at 5 CFS! I’m pretty sure I can fill up my tub faster than the river is flowing! I’ve never seen any river that low. It was just all rocks and puddles. Very sad.
I recommend not fishing that section until it gets some water. The fishing is probably extremely poor and the fish need all the help they can get. It’ll take a lot of water before the fishing gets good again.

Watch Out For Trains In The Canyon

This trip I fished below Boca to see for myself how low the river was and how it was fishing.

My day started in Hirschdale in the canyon section. The water was murky and low here resembling more of a creek than a river. The water temperature was nice and cool which was good considering the hot summer the Truckee experienced. Warm water and trout don’t mix well.
My objective this trip was to try and catch a brown trout therefore the majority of the day was dedicated to throwing streamers. Although nymphs were more successful throughout the day, most of the fish that I caught were small bows.
There were also a bunch of bugs hatching in the morning but very few small fish rising. 

Nice Big Streamer Eater

I covered a ton of water but found no browns, all bows this trip. The biggest fish was around 18” taking a Hero Sculpin and the smallest was around 8”. There wasn’t much fishable water to work with so I ended up hiking more than fishing.

Baby Truckee Bow

If you want to fish the Truckee I recommend that you go just to see how the bad the conditions are. Just experiencing this river in drought conditions will make you want keep off the river until more water comes through. I know I will.

Little Truckee River
This was my first experience fishing the LTR. I found several big fish in the LTR averaging about 14” with the biggest looking around 20” but they weren’t eating. There weren’t any redds yet but the fish  were probably in the process of staging.
I fished around the meadow section which had a lot of shallow slow moving water and aquatic plants. Extremely difficult fishing! Everything literally had to be perfect if I wanted to hook up. It didn’t happen this trip.

Meadow Section LTR

I have a feeling that this section of the LTR is very hatch orientated; fish morning and evening and if your not matching the hatch exactly you weren’t going to get any bites. Very challenging fly fishing.

The next time I visit I’ll try fishing a different section of the LTR.


Yuba River
On the way home I stopped by the Yuba River. The flows are looking great at 682 CFS, much higher than the last time I visited. I tried fishing the evening dry fly hatch but failed to hook up. Oh well at least there’s water here.

A Wet Relief!
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Keep Calm and Fly Fish™