With the last week of cold weather, we’ve been seeing the bite start off pretty slow, even through mid-day, with the best fishing often being from around 1:00 until dark. As of now the water has been cold and clear and the smaller flies are going to be the ticket when these conditions are present. 

Over the last week we have been doing best on midges and baetis fished down to a size 20, but with Skwalas around the corner, the more opportunistic fish are still taking olive or brown stonefly nymphs in sizes 10-12 with some regularity. We typically begin to see Skwalas around the end of March and some years they can last all the way through June, but you can begin to use the nymphs pretty well before the actual hatch. We have been getting reports of Skwalas already starting to emerge on the Yuba, which is certainly a few weeks early, but given the weather it isn’t hard to believe. 

With this wet storm starting today, the larger attractor nymphs will begin to fish well again, and you can put away the 5x for the time being. Streamer fishing should also pick right back up when cloud cover is present. While the streamer fishing was good a couple of weeks ago, we have noticed it slow down quite a bit, likely due to how cold the days have been.