Fast Forward to March 2014, Yuba River

“Deer Creek is flowing above 60 CFS depositing mud into the Yuba River, the river is blown…” say all the area fly shops on their fishing reports.

“Jared, can you fish the Yuba this weekend? It’s BLOWN.” “Yep, I think I can do that.”

Beulah 5 wt. CZ (or European, I can’t remember what they’re going to be called) and an 11′ 7″ “mystery rod” tackle a river that’s “blown”. Rivers like to be “blown”, as you will see….

I’ll park these here, says Jared. (mystery rod in hand)

 

Let’s get busy!

Where the hell is everybody? This place is usually crowded.

Shit, the ranger, hide your beer. Oh, he doesn’t care. Cool Dog.

 

So, we used SA 6 wt. nymph and steelhead lines on both 5 wt. rods and were able to both CZ nymph and indicator fish as needed. Our leaders were modified Andy Burk leaders, surprisingly for both methods. My leader consists of about 6 feet of 8 lb. PowerPro with a 2.25 mm tippet ring at the bottom. The top loop is the PowerPro contained inside some Gudebrod braided butt, 15 lb. made into a tight loop. A loop of Gudebrod 20 lb. is on the flyline. Below the tippet ring is a typical dropper rig made of 3x flouro main and 4x dropper. My anchor flies were a 1/8 or 1/16 oz. sculpin jig that I developed with a pink SJ worm, or whatever on the dropper. Jared’s big fish was on a fly we called the “cat poop”, a #2 or #4 dark brown shape that resembled a Jurassic stonefly, a big sculpin, or cat poop. He lost the fly on the next fish. He doesn’t listen. The pattern is lost.

For indicator, we cut off the braided upper loop and attached a tippet ring, then a 18″ 2x monofilament butt section. A Thingamabobber was put in the butt section as close to the tippet ring as possible so we could get a good vertical drop. That’s about it for what worked.