American and Lower Yuba Rivers

Lots of Salmon carcasses around the American still.

My buddy Sebastian caught a nice chromer on the American last week so I decided to brave the Sacramento traffic, wind and rain on Monday morning and head over.
I fished at the end of Illinois st pretty close to the dam. There's a nice run straight out from the parking lot where Sebastian caught about a 13 lb fish.
I managed to go 1 for 2. Both on a swung Prince nymph. The landed fish was nice, around 6 lbs and pretty dark. The second one came unbuttoned pretty quick but it felt a little bigger.
It was cold and the fishing was a little slower than expected so I didn't hang around long. I didn't see anyone else catch any fish and around noon it started getting a little crowded.

American River  below Hazel Blvd bridge

Today I fished the Yuba and hooked a few fish on red copper johns and red headed step child. The nicest fish of the day came on a swing of the RHSC. I saw a nice fish jump about two feet in the air and my buddy Keith said its probably chasing caddis. I didn't have my fly box on me so I just started swinging the RHSC and got lucky.

There was a nice PMD hatch around 1 with some sporadic BWO as well. We also saw some Skwala around which was cool. 

Our aim was to hit that hatch and catch some fish on dries but the window was really short and most of the fish we saw rising were just out of reach for a good drift.

Skwala don't like to have their pictures taken