The North Fork of the Yuba is classic Sierra freestone — a tumbling, granite-bottomed river of plunge pools and pocket water threading through the canyon, holding wild rainbows that fight well above their weight and browns that grow heavier and warier in the deeper lies. This is a river you fish on your feet, hopping from pocket to pocket, reading where the broken water sets a feeding lane and dropping a fly into it before the current spits it out. The early season belongs to snowmelt, which runs it cold and pushy until things settle. Once the flows drop into summer shape, the caddis come off well and the terrestrials start falling, and a buoyant dry with a nymph hung beneath it covers most of what the river asks. Beautiful, demanding, rewarding water — and a wade that asks for respect.

• River
• Mixed