I enjoyed looking at that list, brought back some memories.
I'll mention one river on that list, as I seriously doubt anybody is going to paddle it, but safety in mind if they did.
The Yuba river from Englebright dam to the hwy 20 bridge. Back in 1990 my friend Kevin and I started flyfishing. Kevin hired a guide for the lower Yuba to fish for steelhead. The guide keyed him in on using a lot of weight and tossing black AP's and a few other flies. Kevin and I fished like that for a year and felt like we did ok with maybe 2-3 small steelhead/resident rainbows landed each per trip.
I fished it one early winter day with a couple of my other friends, one who I will refer to as mooch. It was a typical day dunking the typical flies with the standard results, except for mooch who would repeatedly snag bottom and break off. After yet another snag he switched over to an indicator and borrowed yet another fly, this time a glo-bug, from the group. On his first cast he landed a decent sized fish in the upper teens. On a whim I switched over to a small glo-bug but kept the weight, ala chuck n duck, and I ended up with 12 fish.
When I got home that evening Kevin called and asked how the fishing was, and I told him I caught 12, which he promptly called bs. After filling him in on the secret we decided to head back the following morning. We were about half way up river around noon, between the hwy20 bridge and the narrows when we ran into a guy from team Orvis. Orvis rod, reel, hat, vest, waders, boots and probably a couple tattoos. Orvis asked how we had done and stated he caught a couple on a blah blah blah scientific name, "how about you"? Kevin and I discussed it between ourselves briefly and figured about 70 between us. Orvis just shook his head and walked away, not believing a word we said. Kevin and I ended up with roughly 120 fish that day between us.
We fished like that for about a year before wondering what the water was like up above the narrows. The narrows was the furthest you could hike up river due to a narrow river gorge with towering vertical walls. We started asking around the fly shops and other people we would meet on the river, with everybody telling us there were no fish up there.
We ended up buying a $40 rubber raft to find out. A piece of 3/4" plywood was cut to fit the bottom so we could kneel on it. We paddled across the face of Englebright dam and carried it down the access road to the bottom of the dam. My understanding doing this post 9/11 is highly frowned upon by the local popo. To shorten up the story a bit, we ended up with well over 100 fish each that day.
The warning is about the rapids in the narrows. We didn't have google earth or anything else to scout the river with. We floated down in that little rubber raft and would bail out to fish different good looking water. We had bailed out above a small island to fish but were hesitant to float lower due to a set of rapids and a blind corner. Keving opted to wear both of our life jackets and I would take all fishing gear and try to hike up and around while he floated it. The hike up and around was no joke and took over an hour.
Kevins story. He made it around the corner and went over a small waterfall that filled the raft with water. He then went over another waterfall and was sucked under, caught in the boil. He said it was like being caught in a washing machine full of bubbles and held him for about 30 seconds before he popped to the surface about 100 feet downstream in deep calm water. A short time later the raft popped up next to him. Lucky lucky lucky.
Past the last waterfall the river entered the "narrows", which was narrow, slow and deep for a half mile or so before coming out to the hikeable section, with a great float from there to the hwy20 bridge. We made that float half a dozen times or so but portaged around on the right side (first run we were stuck on the left side) to avoid the falls.
The other warning. On one of our trip through the narrows we were fired upon from somebody high up on the side of the cliffs, with multiple rounds entering the water around our raft. We suspected pot farmers trying to scare us v kill us. There was also a gold claim with dredging in that same section, so?
Kevin and I split ways when he started using drugs. Around that same time, the land along the river was purchased and closed to public access unless you were willing to pay to play. We had a few great years on that river before the changes and landed and incredible number of fish. My last trip was in '95 (30 years ago...wow) when the new owners started kicking people out of the river while brandishing sidearms.
), but more out of a desire to protect it.
