Yuba Bass?

[UTBASS]

Are their smallies in Yuba? I know they are in the river ... What is the food base there?
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]I have never taken a smallie from Yuba, nor have I heard of any. If there were smallies they were probably wiped out, along with most of the other fish, when Yuba was drained a couple of years ago for dam repairs.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Yuba has pretty much always been a cannibalistic system. The primary forage base has been the young of the perch, carp and other larger species living in the lake. It has never had a major population of crawdads, chubs or shiners. There are chubs and suckers in the river, both above and below the lake, but the predators have always kept them pretty well cleaned out within Yuba.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Right now, trout are kings of the hill in Yuba, but the perch are coming on strong. There have been documented catches of walleyes, which likely survived upriver during the drawdown. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]It is also likely there are a few northern pike left. Haven't heard of any channel cats yet, but nobody has really been fishing the lake that much. I am sure there were some in the river that will help reestablish a population. I wouldn't be surprised to see them get some help from DWR.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I doubt if smallmouth are a part of the future for Yuba, unless some bucket bozos make the introduction. Perch are both the primary fishing attraction in the lake (along with walleyes) and also the main prey species. Smallmouth would only contribute to the next crash. That poor lake keeps going through boom and bust cycles, with the perch population being the key element. Smallies would throw an added predation factor into the equation.[/#0000ff]
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[UTBASS]

I don't know anything about that lake. I would hope that it flourishes to it's maximum capabilities.
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[fuzzyfisher]

i have never heard of any SMbass in yuba.. there are LMbass in redmond and were some in gunnson that could have made there way down to yuba.. but i have never seen or heard of any comeing out of there..
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[GEEZER]

I'm guessin' it was 27 yrs. ago when I lived in Richfield that I saw a guy with about a 7 lb largemouth that he'd caught out of the tamarisk across to the southeast of the ramp. He didn't know what it was & was about to pitch it back thinking it was some kind of carp. He almost had a coronary when I told him what it was. I fished that lake a lot back then & that's the only bass I know of though.
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[UTBASS]

When they killed the fish off ... did they take all of them? Did any fish survive the kill? Thanks for thhe info!
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]It was not so much "killing the fish off" as a die off from the result of draining the last small remaining pool in the lake after it had almost dried up from several years of drought. Most of the fish left behind were carp, and even they did not survive the final days in the oxygen depleted and shallow water. The seagulls and pelicans had a feast and even the coyotes had easy pickings for quite a while.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]There was not much for DWR to attempt to salvage, so to the best of my knowledge, no fish were harvested for holding or transplant. The current northerns, walleyes and potential channel cats (still unconfirmed) almost surely come from small holdover populations that managed to escape up the Sevier River before the lake dried up. There are some holes upriver that could support fish, and they do not get fished much except by a few locals from the farming communities.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]As soon as the lake started refilling, it was stocked with large numbers of rainbows, to provide a fishery. It also received plants of yellow perch, harvested from Jordanelle for DWR by a couple of fishing clubs .[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Part of the original problem, that led to the crash of the perch population, and subsequently all of the other species, was the lack of vegetation in the lake for the perch to spawn in. They need that. They do not spawn in open gravel nests, or free spawn like their cousins the walleyes.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]It seems that the flooded weeds and brush around the lake, after our big water year, was kind to the perch. It looks like there are a lot of perch fry and that the older fish are feeding well. Hopefully we will have a good spawn again this year and Yuba will be back.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]A comment on GEEZER's sighting of a largemouth. I have also seen a couple of largies taken from Yuba in the "olden days". I suspect they came from the same place the northern pike did...Redmond Lake. Redmond has northerns, largemouth and channel cats and it has "spilled" a couple of times in the past, after prolonged periods of heavy rains. Any overflows would go into the Sevier River and that is the source of water for Yuba.[/#0000ff]
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[slayerace]

Tubedude, Never say never...Yuba now has a strong population of shiners. As Jed Burton will attest, we "tried" to catch some of those monster Bows last Thursday only to be foiled by the 500 million shiners acting as breakfast, lunch, dinner and mid-day snack for our quarry. I have only seen larger schools of baitfish in the ocean. At one point, several shoals united making a mega-shoal 50' across and 100' long. Even the huge schools of Shiners and Chubs at the Berry could not hold a candle to the numbers of Minnows we saw. The ones we saw were at the north and south boat ramps. We never went up or down the shoreline, but we did see numerous Shiner boils hundreds of yards in both directions followed by hungry trout crashing the surface.
Although we failed to catch a Bow, we did manage to net 1000's of minnows for the upcoming ice season!
Even the Park Ranger that visited us said he had never seen so many shiners. They appeared to me to be Red Sided Shiners, without the red stripe, from 1" to 2.5" long. BTW, we tried everything in our arsenal to trick the Bows, including dangling a fresh (dead) Minnow under a bobber. We were only successful in tricking a few dozen Perch (released) that would hit anything presented.

Slayerace
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]That helps clear up a question I had too. Ocean had reported the vast schools of minnows but was unable to positively identify them. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The question still remaining is exactly what species they are. There are several species of shiners. If they are golden shiners they are probably an illegal introduction, since I do not believe DWR plants them or wants them in the watershed.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Anybody know who to talk to on that subject? I will be going down next weekend to sample the situation for my ownself. I will attempt to harvest a few of the little darlings for bait too. I was planning to get another cast net but decided to wait until spring.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]One thing is for sure, and that is with that much bait in there the predators will repopulate fast and grow big.[/#0000ff]
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[bassrods]

There have been smalle's in the river below Yuba sense back in the 60's that I know off.
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[fuzzyfisher]

the minnows are more than likeley red side shiners. the sanpitch river has alot of them and gunnison res has a bunch in there this year as well.. yuba is only 15 miles down river it's a good bet that they have made there way into yuba!!
that should make the fishing there so much better!! now if we could just get the DWR to put some fish in gunnison and it would be all good and right.
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[CROSSINEYES]

O WHAT GREAT NEWS!!!! THE WALLEYES ARE GONA FEAST. THIS IS SO GOOD TO HEAR... DID YOU SEE MANY GEESE WHILE NETTING MINNOWS? WHIT THAT MUTCH PREY FOR THE SMALL EYES GROTH RATE IS GOING TO BE FENNOMINAL. MAN IM STOKED!!!!1
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[slayerace]

I actually was looking for ducks and geese also. I saw several ducks and no geese. Last Thanksgiving there were tons of ducks and several
hundred geese on the northwest side. I plan on hunting there as soon as the bad weather up north forces them down here. If you want some company when you head down there PM me. As soon as there was ice on the lake last year, the birds totally disappeared.

Slayerace
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[gshorthair]

There is a possibility of smallies in yuba. Both the otter creek and piute resevoirs had smallies added to them following the rebuiling of the dams. Both resevoirs have since been basically emptied by the irrigation companies that control them. The smallies had to go down stream. Last spring the sevier river below the piute resevoir ran at flooding levels for weeks. It certainly would be possible for smallies to wash down during the spring flooding and show up in yuba. Only time will tell. Gshorthair
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