The week almost forgotten by Tom Page

Thursday 2-10-2011,

Well some times life just gets in the way, last week I spent two days guiding on the Lower Yuba. On Thursday I spent the day with two old friends Norm and Trent both locals of Grass Valley and Nevada City. Trent just purchased a Redington switch rod that we broke in nicely for him. We started our float around 10:00 and Trent hooked the first fish around 10:15 it was a good size fish around 16”. Norm soon followed with a fish a round the same size, we hooked fish all day long pretty consistently, I stop counting some were around 12. The hot flies were rubber leg stones, red copper johns, S&M nymphs, and fox pupas. All in all it was a great day of fishing.

On a side note we ran into a couple of locals that were floating the river and one of them landed a nice size brown that measured at 17”. This is now the 4^th brown landed that I know of. Some people have reported that the browns are coming from Lake Englebright, but what is being over looked is Dry creek that runs through Sycamore ranch. Dry creek is the drainage from Collins Lake, and Collins Lake has a bunch of brown trout I would say more than Lake Englebright. So who knows you can be the next to catch one of these rear brown trout, so get out and fish.

Friday 2-11-2011,

Awe crap, woke up at 5 am, checked the flows on the Yuba, they dropped again another 200 cfs. My first thought was that SUCKS. So now what? What is the new game plan, do I fish the same way I did yesterday? What runs do I fish differently? Man I need some coffee! Now that’s better. I tied up some more rubber legs and red copper johns, all though I only had enough brown chenille for three rubber legs, so I then tied up some rubber legs using variegated brown and green chenille. Good call the fish were all over them.

I met my clients Bruce and Jason for a half day trip at 10:30. Bruce has been a great client over the years, he all ways brings some one new. Jason is pretty green to fly fishing, so I spent a lot of time teaching Jason. Unfortunately Jason did not catch any fish but he learned a bunch. We fished nymphs all day. Bruce hooked up on nine fish, Jason had a couple of nice fish come up to some dries, but pulled the fly away both times. It was a great day the flows did not seem to affect the fishing to much. All though we caught smaller fish or just landed the smaller ones.

Saturday 2-12-2011,

I went to the Feather River with Keith Scott and Dave Barbieri; the reports are that the strippers are being caught. Let’s just say it was a fun day with two good buddies. Keith has a nice little bass tracker that sat all winter, the 40 horse Murc ran great for setting so long. The electric trolling motor did not fear so well. Keith has three batteries and only one worked for part of the day, we noticed that there is a bad splice in the wiring so we called it a day. Keith fixed the problem at home so hopefully we will be out soon. We did see one guy fishing plugs caught a nice stripper around 15 pounds.