To paraphrase Thomas Wolfe “you can never go home again”.  Pat and I recently traveled back to New England to visit my old home town of Alstead, New Hampshire and do a little fishing in the storied waters of the Catskills “the birthplace of American fly fishing”.

American Museum of Fly Fishing

The town of Alstead is still as quiet as ever even though the population has doubled in the last fifty years (from 600 people to 1200),  Most of the buildings that I remember in the town are gone or in disrepair.  However, my old home, the town library, and the swimming pool are still there.  I suspect that a lot of the buildings were lost during a huge flood 10 years ago; many were replaced with grass by an extension of the town park.  I did find the place below the dam at the town pool where I caught my first trout on a fly and Crane Brook, where I caught my first trout ever (on bait), still flows through the meadow I remember.

On our way to the Catskills, we visited Manchester, Vermont; the home of Orvis and the American Museum of Fly Fishing.  If you are ever in Manchester visit the museum as the exhibits are wonderful and the fly plates are great!

Pat and a Delaware rainbow

We arrived in Roscoe, New York, late on a gray day with rain threatening, so we checked into our room at the Baxter House B & B and went to visit the Catskill Fly Fishing Center.  This is another great museum!  They have Harry Darbee’s fly tying setup with his original vise and materials along with another setup with the Dette’s ( Walt and Winnie) vises and tools.  Many of the great Catskill fly tyers have displays and fly plates in the museum.

We had a float trip planed on the East Branch of the Delaware the following morning.  The weather was cool and again threatened rain (and it did come), so we dressed appropriately and took off.  The fishing wasn’t spectacular but we did get a few nice rainbows and one nice brown.  Evidently the fish and hatches in the Catskills like sun rather than cool weather.  The weather we fished in was similar to the weather we would expect our olives to hatch.  We did see a few olives and a few isonychia duns but there were no big hatches.

Fall colors

We did some fishing during the following two days in the Beaverkill and the Willowemoc without a great deal of success.  One morning we stopped by the old Dette’s home which is still a fly shop.  The pictures show a old time fly shop with everything in disarray but still findable.  This is the oldest fly shop in the United States.  The weather turned really stormy and we finally left early to drive back to the airport.  All in all a great trip!

On the first of October, the Gold Country Fly Fishers had an outing on the North Yuba led by yours truly.  There was a total of seven of us; a nice sized group that didn’t require trying to spread everybody over miles of river.  Due to the higher than normal flows, we decided to fish in the special regulation section rather than below Downieville as we have in past years. The fishing wasn’t “hot” but we had a great time.  The day started overcast but quickly turned into a sunny day with big cumulus clouds.

Don Liljebad with Tenkara

I brought an 11 foot Tenkara rod to show the group and do a little “demo”.  I wound up having to pry the rod out of Don Liljeblad’s hands!  He had a great time hitting the pockets and drifting the runs with a dry and dropper.  I finally got the rod back after he caught a fish.  Tenkara rods seem to work very well on the North Yuba, especially in the pocket water.

I still have not seen any October caddis on the North Yuba this year, but I expect the emergence should start any day now.  I am carrying a box of patterns with me to be prepared. That’s all I need to carry; another box of flies!  Also among the missing right now, are the Kokanee that normally run up from Bullards Bar to just above Fiddle Creek at this time of year.  They should arrive soon; the bears are looking for them!

The flows on the river right now are between 160 and 175 cfs.  This is the highest flow I have seen at this time of year since the early nineties.  Below Downieville, due to the additional flows from the Downie River, it can be difficult to move around in some sections.  I don’t expect that the flows will be significantly different for the balance of the year, especially since we are forecast to have rain next week with the chance of snow at the higher elevations.

They are doing well on the Little Truckee.  The flows have just come back up after they finished working on the dam.  There are a lot of fish( browns and rainbows) in the Little Truckee arm of Boca as they are preparing to move up the river–the browns to spawn and the rainbows to feast.

Pat fishing a run just above Downieville

Pat and I will be gone for a while on a trip back to New England for the fall colors and some fishing in the birthplace of American fly fishing—the Beaverkill, Willowemoc Creek, and the East Branch of the Delaware.  We will be back in time, however, get in on the October caddis emergence on the North Yuba!

Flows on the North Yuba have held fairly consistently at a little over 200 cfs for the past few weeks.  That flow is approximately the normal flow at the beginning of August during the last few years.  The water is cool, in the mid-fifties, and clear.  Fly fishing has been good for fish in the 8-12 inch range.  The hatches have been sparse.  There are a few size #14 green caddis and a few #16 PMD’s flitting around but I have not seen a really good hatch.  There were a lot of October Caddis cases during the early part of the season.  They have since switched to stone cases and have disappeared under the rocks preparing to hatch during the later part of September or early October.

We have been using dries with droppers, straight double nymph indicator set-ups and swinging soft hackles to catch these fish.  Morning appears to be the most productive time running up to around noon with another small productive period just before dark.

Small Stream-Fly Fishing

Successful flies have been:  #14-#16 Adams Parachutes, #14 Buzz Hackles, #12 Yellow Stimulators and #12-#16 Humpies in red, green and yellow.  Nymphs include:  #14-#16 red Copper Johns, #14-#16 Turkey B/H, #16 Biot B/H, #14-#18 Hare’s Ear’s (dark fur), and #12-#16 B/H Princes.

The Lower Yuba above the Highway 20 bridge is closed until the first of December for the salmon spawning period.  Flows have been dropped to 835 cfs and the water is clear and cold at 50 to 51 degrees.  At this point I haven’t heard of any reports of salmon but they should be here shortly.  I have no reports on the fishing below the bridge as of yet.

Pat fishing Trout Run in Minnesota

Pat and I recently returned from a combination family and fishing trip in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  Sure took care of the problem of California’s high water!  We fished a few of the streams in the “Driftless Country” again as we did two years ago.  Returned to a couple of favorites like Trout Run in Minnesota and Timber Coulee in Wisconsin and had time for a few new ones.  The fishing was excellent but the weather was typically Midwest in that it was warm and humid with occasional rain and the bugs were out in force.  We caught most of our fish using dries and droppers with the fish, predominately browns, taking either one.  The most successful dry was a size #14 parachute ant and the most successful nymph was a flash-back PT on a 18 inch dropper.  We didn’t see any hugh hatches but enough bugs came dribbling off to keep the fish looking up.  Most of the hatches were sulfur duns which are imitated well enough by our PMD imitations.  With the amount of rain they have had back there, the waters were slightly discolored which, frankly, made the fishing easier than it was two years ago.  If you ever get a chance try the “Driftless Country” you will enjoy the experience and the fishing!

Bohemian Creek, Wisconsin

Here the situation hasn’t changed from when we left.  I spent yesterday (July 1, 2011) up in the North Yuba drainage from the summit at 6700 feet down.  The river is over 2400 cfs with peaks to 3000 cfs in the late afternoon.  The creeks are brimful and ripping.  The only possibility that I saw was that Goodyear Creek was fishable as was Indian Valley.  I don’t know if any appreciable numbers of fish have remained in these tributaries.

The Lower Yuba has been fluctuating between 9000 cfs and 7000 cfs with the river near 7000 cfs this morning (July 2, 2011).  The fly fishing is extremely difficult with nymphing the way to go, even though there are thousands of grasshoppers available.  You just need to walk and search out the soft spots.  A good day right now would be a couple of fish a day in the 14-16 inch range.

Eye Shot

The last couple of weeks have been busy what with fishing and photography.  Last weekend, I took a three day photography workshop, sponsored by Blue Fountain Farms, given by Gregg Albracht from Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Gregg is known for his horse photography.  We visited several horse farms around Nevada County and got to photograph horses loose in their pastures as they ran by us.  We were also treated to riding demonstrations and worked with a model.  Part of the workshop included critics of the prior days photos which has been a considerable help in improving my photographs.  A great time was had by all!

Largemouth Bass

The bass fishing has been good over the last couple of weeks.  We have spent a considerable amount of time on smaller water with both top water and underwater flies (nymphs and streamers).  As I type this, however, a new front is moving in along with both rain at the lower elevations and snow expected in the mountains, again.  That will probably slow the bass fishing for a couple of days until it warms.

Pat and I made a trip up along the North Yuba on a combination fishing and photography expedition.  The main purpose of the drive up was to take pictures of the blooming dogwood trees with little hope of finding fishable water.  The Dogwood blooms were out in full force and I took a number of photos but we needed to fish so we started to look around.

Dogwood

The North Yuba is running about three thousand cfs with higher peaks in the afternoon as the run-off increases during the day.  Definitely not comfortable fly fishing! Fiddle Creek and Goodyear Creek, were both high and cold eliminating those two from fishing consideration.  However I did have an “ace in the hole”.  We drove to a small creek that drains a limited amount of snow country and “eureka” it was fishable.  We dragged out the three weight rods, geared up and gave it a try.  The rainbows weren’t large but they were active and we had a great time using dries and dries with droppers.  At least it was a start on the Sierra season.

Unnamed Creek

In my opinion, depending on consistent warm weather, it will be at least another 30 days before we can hope to be fly fishing on the North Yuba.

It has been awhile since I updated the blog but with the snow, rain and cold, the fishing has been poor to say the least.  Right now, the Lower Yuba is flowing over 8000cfs and the North Yuba is over 2700cfs.  Neither one is conducive to fly fishing.  At this point, I can’t even estimate when there will be fishable flows on either river and the main runoff hasn’t even started yet.

Bass fishing will be the center of attention for a while.  Even though the weather has been cool and rainy, the lakes are warming up into the mid-fifties.  The bass and bluegill are beginning to nest.  We have been fishing some of the smaller farm ponds,se since they tend to warm up faster than the bigger lakes.  Cooler weather, especially in the morning, has meant that nymph fishing early in the day has been more productive than going directly to floating bugs and poppers.

Largemouth on dragonfly nymph

This is the time of year that the damselflies and dragonflies are beginning to emerge so patterns that imitate these nymphs are very productive now.  Remember to keep your retrieves slow, especially with the damselfly nymphs.  Dragonfly nymphs, when they are not clambering around in the vegetation or along the bottom, swim with jet propulsion by expelling water from their anal cavity.  By using a hand twist retrieve, with pops of your wrist, you can imitate this movement very easily.  In most of the smaller ponds, you can use a floating weight forward line with a nine foot 3x leader.  Full sinking lines and sink tips tend to get hung up on the bottom and in the vegetation making retrieves difficult.

As the day warms up and you can begin to hear the bluegill popping in the tules, it is time to go to floating bugs and poppers.  My experience has been that the larger the bug the bigger the bass you will take.  I tend to use foam bugs built along the lines of a Gurgler.  They aren’t as pretty as hair bugs or commercial poppers, but they have have a couple of advantages.  First, they are easy to tie and come out of the vise quicker.  Secondly, they are soft like hair bugs and the bass tend to hold on to them longer giving you that extra fraction of  a second to set the hook.  Poppers tend to be hard and the bass reject them quickly.  Sizes 2/0 to 4 seem to be the ticket for the larger fish.

If you want to catch bluegill, you will have to reduce the size of your bugs to #8-#14.  I’ll continue with how to catch larger bluegill in another update.

As I sit here tonight (2/17/11), the temperature is 31 degrees, there is two inches of snow on the ground and the Lower Yuba has gone from 2000cfs to over 4000cfs, which includes a huge amount from Deer Creek.  Not a whole lot of fishing going on right now!

I spent the afternoon tying red, black and chartreuse Copper Johns, since Pat and I ran out last weekend.  The job has gotten a lot easier now that I don’t have to use epoxy.  Clear Cure Goo, which is cured by ultraviolet light, is much simpler and quicker to use.  Rather than having to mix up several different batches of epoxy to do two dozen flies, the entire two dozen can be done one right after another.  I don’t think I’ll ever go back to epoxy.

Dennis Carlsen with a Lower Yuba Brown taken last week

The Fly Fishing Show will be held at the Pleasanton Fairgrounds February 25,26,and 27th.  As was as I am concerned, this is the best fly fishing show on the West Coast.  If you can make it-do it!  See you there!

Yes, that’s a brown caught on the Lower Yuba above the Highway 20 Bridge.  I understand that there have been a few others caught this spring.

The flows on the Lower Yuba will be lowered starting January 31st.  On the 31st starting at 8:00 am, the flow will be reduced 400 cfs and again on February 7th at 8:00 AM, the flow will be lowered another 400 cfs bringing the river down to 2200 cfs.  All of this is dependent on the weather, of course, and it is always wise to check the flows before you go.

Currently the flows are 3000 cfs with good clarity (visibility to 3-4 feet) with a nice green tinge.  The Skwala emergence is sporadic and I don’t believe the main emergence has happened.

Underside-Skwala adult

We are only seeing a few bugs in the air, rocks and willows and even fewer on the water.

However, the fish will take a dry Skwala pattern and we fished a dry pattern today (1-27-11) using a dropper.  Picked up a couple of small fish in about a two hour session both on the dry.  Pat tried indicator nymphing but didn’t get a hit.  Any nymph rig at this time of year should probably include a brown rubber leg stone pattern as the Skwala nymphs are be migrating towards the sides of the river preparing to emerge.

Rainbow-Lower Yuba

With the warmer weather the Lower Yuba is beginning to fish better with a few Skwala stoneflies beginning to emerge.  Current flows are 3000 cfs with the visibility improving to two feet with a nice greenish tinge.  You should look for fish along the slower runs against the bank not in the heavy water in the middle.

We have been using indicator nymph rigs for the most part, although I did take a couple of fish on a Skwala dry pattern yesterday along a group of willows.  The  successful nymph patterns have been red Copper Johns #14, b/h Prince #14 and  small red San Juan Worms.

However, most of our fish have been taken on orange egg patterns as these fish just don’t want to give up the “protein” bite.  We will usually attach one of the above nymph imitations on a 12” dropper off the egg hook.   The “egg hatch” has gone on for quite some time this year!