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View Full Version : YoooooooBaaaaaaaah!



LOAH
03-10-2008, 10:28 AM
So I made the drive to the middle of nowhere yesterday (Yuba) in hopes of seeing some open water.

Those hopes were mostly shattered, but I was willing to work with what I found. There was a 20 foot band surrounding the shoreline of really soft ice that I waded out and chunked apart to make a path for my offerings.

I waited for a long time with zero action. I didn't even see fish other than 3 tiny (inch and a half maybe) baby fish on the boat ramp.

I saw one of the State Park employees arrive and went to talk to them for a moment. She said that I could hop the gate at the closed West Beach area and I wouldn't get in trouble. I had seen a couple of football field's worth of open water over there and wanted to exploit it.

So I made it over to West Beach and pumped up my tube and got my new fly rod ready. I got out into about 7 feet of water max and was grateful there wasn't anyone around to watch me make a mockery of fly fishing. :lol8:

After getting somewhat of a feel for the single haul, I managed to tie a really strong knot without even trying! Too bad it was made of my tapered leader. :crazy:

So that was it for the fly rod and the minnow wasn't getting any love. I thought I'd seen ripples from active fish on the surface while walking up, but it ended up being air bubbles coming up from the mud. Psych!

I floated for a couple of hours and started to feel the chill, so I got out and hiked back to the car to return to the Oasis Campground, where I started.

The previously frozen strip of soft ice had now turned into water and I made my way along the shoreline trying out each section and dropping my bait at the edge of the real ice.

NADA!!! Someone needs to tell those fish that there's open water. Lil bastards. :lol8:

At one spot, I reeled in to try another and found a good sized perch on the other end. Yippee, a bait thief! Oh well. It was a fish and it kept me from a big fat skunk. It was about 10 inches, so it wasn't bad for a stupid little perch, but I'd rather catch something else. Plus, anglers are required to keep any and all perch caught until May 1st. Limit 10 BTW, so if you catch 10 perch, you're done fishing. :roll:

I really wanted to see some trout since Yuba tends to grow them quickly to an impressive size. 32,000+ brookies at about 3.5 inches were dumped into Yuba last July, but that was just left over brood stock that they had and they're not serious about keeping them in there (or they'd be larger before stocking). What does it mean? It means pike and walleye snacks. I guess the leftover brookies served better as food than stocking material since the Uintas are teeming with them and the boulders already have enough issues with overpopulation anyhow.

What I'm getting at is that I'm sure some of those brookies survived to grow out of forage size. I'm pretty sure I had a few spit out my spinner back in September since that's the only fish besides perch that would've been about 6 inches at that time. They weren't perch.

The remaining bows will almost undoubtedly be magnum by now since they were breaking the 5lb mark last year and none were stocked. Any bows now have been in there for 2+ years and should be pretty impressive.

Same goes for tiger trout. Any of the tigers they planted a couple of years ago should be really nice by now, if they survived the toothy northerns.

I can't wait until the rainbow spawn at Yuba this year. They'll be in close to shore and up for grabs.

Next week should have enough open water for some real fishing and I'm pretty sure the fish will know where the open water is by then.

Maybe another trip is in order.

Happy Fishing, Humans.

waltny
03-10-2008, 08:01 PM
Sounds like a good time indeed. Ive got the itch for some soft water lately myself, Ill just have to settle for the Weber for now as most of my spots up north here are still under a few feet of ice.