Sunday, February 22, 2009

Water Clarity Report


Amidst all of the rain we have had in the last couple of weeks I am sure you all are wondering about clarity on the local rivers. I guided the Yuba on Friday and was only expecting about 3-4 feet of visibility with deer creek flowing around 100cfs. When I showed up at the river it was like last weeks storm never even happened. The Yuba was extremely clear and there was about 6 feet of visibility. With all of the rain I am sure that deer creek has to be pumping quite a bit of color into the water but it probably is fishable. Friday the fishing was good but not excellent. We hooked 17 rainbows and landed 10 of them. The hot flies were rubberlegs, copper johns, and small olive caddis patterns. The morning was pretty slow with hardly any bugs on the water. We hooked the majority of our fish after 1PM. The cool thing is that we landed two big yuba rainbows with one going 23" and the other 21". Those big fish really pull on that river.

The clarity on the Lower Sac on Saturday was about 4 feet up in Posse Grounds. The fishing was good and we boated 30+ rainbows on a variety of nymphs from rubberlegs, red copper johns, red headed step child, and flashback pt's. Sunday the story was a whole lot different on the upper drift between Posse and Bonnyview. The water clarity this morning was about 3 feet above Sundial Bridge but only about 1 foot at the 44 bridge. Needless to say the fishing above sundial was awesome. We landed 8 fish from the boat launch to the bridge but after that only 3 more fish were hooked. I ended up rowing off because the water was brown brown! It could have been an epic day if we would have kept the 3 feet of clarity. Oh well. We all know that the rain is much needed. The clarity on the Lower Sac should be back to fishable by the middle of the week.

For anyone interested in fishing I will take $100 off anyone wanting to get guided on the Lower Sac or Yuba on March 1, 2, 4, or 6. A great price for some late winter fishing.

Fish Hard even in the Rain!

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