Well it was fun while it lasted. I watched as the “Storm of the Century” passed through and blow out all the valley rivers and streams. I kept track of the flows and it was pretty fun watching them reach such high flows in such a short amount of time. Looks like there is some snow up in the mountains and my family that’s in Quincy said they got over 9” of snow. It doesn’t show signs of stopping as the rains continue to fall every other day until next week? I should probably learn how to fish for winter bass or get more confident at fishing muddy streams because it’ll probably be like this for a while.

Yuba River
The most recent place I’ve fished since the storm was this past weekend on the Yuba. The clarity wasn’t too bad but bad enough to where you couldn’t see a damn thing. There were a couple of other anglers out that said they got into some nice fish on your typical murky water flies. My brother and I didn’t do too well but I did manage to hook a native and hand it over to my brother to fight. I mostly spent the day teaching him the ropes. It was all good practice for the Trinity this weekend.

Muddy water. No Problem

Feather River
I was out on the Feather this morning not knowing what the conditions were going to be like. It was awful. The water was literally chocolate. I was practicing swinging flies for the Trinity trip and didn’t catch anything but a snagged Sac sucker. That river will take a least a week to clear.

I scouted out some of the American River and the currently closed section I looked at was murky of course… but it also had a lot of good water that was very accessible. The river looks very easy to fish and geography wise is similar to the Feather. I’m planning on making a trip down there some day during the winter.
The Trinity River trip is looking good. The river clears a lot faster due to the geography and the flows are looking good for some fresh winter steelies. I am so amped.
The Valley rivers and streams are not looking so good clarity and flow wise right now and it’ll take a few days or weeks for them to get back to prime fishing conditions. Until then its just tying flies, cleaning gear, and enjoying the holidays.

There is always something to look forward as my season never ends: The Yuba River skwala hatch, winter steelheading, new sections of rivers opening. The chasing never stops