Protect

YUBA

Juab and Sanpete

Fathom Restoration

39° 18′ 38″ N

111° 57′ 08″ WSEVIER BRIDGE RESERVOIR

A privately owned irrigation reservoir with one listed purpose , a state park on its shore, and a water level that falls all summer. Every figure is quoted from an agency, and where agencies disagree all of them are printed.

80 ftDeep at full pool

1914Dam completed

92 ftDam height

1Listed purpose: irrigation

23% / 7%Where the ramps close

Conditions right now

Pulled live on every page load from the National Weather Service and from the two federal river gauges either side of the dam. Storage is a monthly federal figure, not a live one, and the reservoir percentage is on the park's own page because nobody publishes it as data.

Forecast at the reservoirNWS

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contacting the National Weather Service

Coming in, above the reservoirUSGS

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Sevier River below the San Pitch

Going out, below the damUSGS

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Sevier River near Juab

Stored, monthlyNRCS

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reading the federal reservoir record

About · 01

What Yuba is

A farm reservoir first and a state park second, and the order matters every summer.

Start with who owns it, because everything else follows from that. The federal dam register lists the owner as Consolidated Sevier Bridge Reservoir Co, owner type Private, and the purpose as a single word: Irrigation . Utah's own dam safety record names the same company .

Recreation is not on that list. Not flood control, not water supply, not fish and wildlife. One purpose, irrigation .

Utah State Parks opened here later: "Opened to the public as a state park in 1970." The dam was already 56 years old.

Utah State Parks tells the founding story this way: "Local farmers and ranchers had to build the dam themselves or risk losing their water rights." And the name: "Yuba State Park got its name from the individuals who built the dam."

Yuba is drawn down through every irrigation season. Not trimmed. Drained.

What is actually in it, month by month

20252026

Acre feet, monthly, from the federal soil conservation service's record for Sevier Bridge Reservoir . 2026 runs to July, which is the latest month published.

Those are the federal monthly storage readings for the last two years . The reservoir fills through the winter, peaks in late winter, and then falls all summer as the water goes to farms. In 2026 it peaked lower than 2025 and fell further.

The ramps have a number, and you can check it 23% AND 7%

Utah wildlife officers publish the thresholds outright: "Boats can not launch from Painted Rocks at less than 23% capacity and at Oasis at less than 7%."

So the two ramps do not close together. Painted Rocks goes first, by a wide margin, and Oasis holds on down to almost nothing. Check the percentage before you hitch up.

What it looks like when it gets there, from the agency's own reports: at 9 per cent, "the Painted Rocks Launch ramp is closed due to low water" . At 6 per cent, "it is no longer safe to launch anything bigger than a single-axle trailer. Yuba State Park rangers report seeing double axel boat trailers falling off the end of the ramp when attempting to launch."

The park publishes a live water level percentage and the status of both ramps on its own page, and this page links it rather than copying a number that goes stale within days .

Figure	Value	Source
Type	Earth	National Inventory of Dams
Height	92 ft	National Inventory of Dams
Crest length	1,340 ft	National Inventory of Dams
Year completed	1914	National Inventory of Dams , Utah Water Rights
Maximum storage	363,000 acre-feet	National Inventory of Dams
Normal storage	205,160 acre-feet	National Inventory of Dams
Drainage area	5,120 square miles	National Inventory of Dams
Hazard classification	High	National Inventory of Dams , Utah Water Rights

Two agencies, two build dates. Utah State Parks says "Yuba Reservoir was built between 1902 and 1917." Both dam registers, federal and state, give a single completion year of 1914 . A construction period and a completion date are not the same claim, so both are printed.

A high hazard rating is about what is downstream if the dam fails, not about the odds of it failing . Utah last inspected it on 23 April 2026 . The federal register still shows an inspection from 2022, because its copy of this record was last refreshed in 2024 .

Utah State Parks runs four named camping areas here, and the fee schedule is the document that proves which ones exist .

Area	What it is	Fee
Oasis	The main developed area. Electric and non electric sites, cabins, group sites, the main boat ramp	$45 electric, $40 non electric, $100 cabins
Painted Rocks	Electric, double and tent sites, a group campsite, the second boat ramp	$45 electric, $40 tent, $90 double
North Beaches	"primitive, no amenities included, you pick your own spot on the sand"	$30 per vehicle
Eagle View	Twenty sites, reachable only by boat	$35 per vehicle

Day use is $15 Monday to Thursday and $20 Friday to Sunday and holidays .

North Beaches needs four wheel drive DEEP SAND

"Note four-wheel drive is recommended, there is deep sand in areas of this campground." And: "No extra vehicles are permitted in the North Beaches Campgrounds."

The park's own pages give two different sets of hours. The sidebar says 6 AM to 10 PM; the fee page heads its table "Day Use Fees (7 AM to 10 PM)" . Both are printed because the park prints both. Fees change: "Fee schedule may be subject to change. Please contact the park for any inquiries."

Sevier River

In at the south east end. Gauged above the reservoir at USGS 10217000 .

Yuba

Held behind 92 feet of earth built in 1914, for one purpose .

Released for irrigation

Gauged below the dam at USGS 10219000 . The reservoir is spent down through every summer.

Sevier Lake

What is left ends in a lake with no outlet, out in the west desert . Most years very little arrives.

The Sevier is the longest river entirely inside Utah and it never reaches the sea. It ends at Sevier Lake in the west desert, which is where the federal names database puts the river's mouth . Most years it does not get that far, because the water is taken out for crops first.

Yuba is one of the places it is taken out. The dam's only listed purpose is irrigation , and the two federal gauges either side of it show the mechanism in real time. The card at the top of this page reads them both .

On the night these were last checked before this page was written, the gauge above the reservoir read about 11 cubic feet per second and the gauge below the dam read about 187. Seventeen times as much water leaving as arriving. That is not a leak, it is the reservoir being spent .

Science · 02

The numbers, and the listing

Four agencies cannot agree how big it is, and one of them has formally listed it as unsafe to swim in.

Figure	Value	Source
Maximum depth at full pool	80 feet	Utah wildlife agency
Dam height	92 feet	National Inventory of Dams
Maximum storage	363,000 acre-feet	National Inventory of Dams
Normal storage	205,160 acre-feet	National Inventory of Dams
Counties	Juab and Sanpete	Utah Fishing Guidebook

Nobody agrees how big it is CONFLICT

Four agencies publish a surface area for this reservoir and they do not line up.

15,940 acres	Utah wildlife agency, given as full pool
9,677 acres	Utah Division of Water Rights, at spillway crest
9,093 acres	Federal hydrography, measured off the water body polygon
8,972 acres	Utah environmental quality, on the assessment record

Three of those four cluster within eight per cent of each other. The fourth is nearly double. This page is not going to declare a winner, but it can add one piece of evidence: scale the outline drawn on this page by its own area and it comes out at about 9,000 acres, which lands with the cluster and not with the outlier. The drawing is traced from the same hydrography as one of them, so that is agreement rather than independent proof. It is still worth knowing which way it points.

Neither a shoreline length nor a second depth figure is published by any agency we could reach. The 80 foot maximum comes from the wildlife agency and it is the only one .

Deer Creek runs 137 feet at its deepest. Jordanelle runs about 280. Flaming Gorge runs 436. Utah Lake runs fourteen. Yuba runs eighty .

Flaming Gorge

436 ft

Jordanelle

280 ft

Bear Lake

208 ft

Deer Creek

137 ft

Yuba

80 ft

Utah Lake

14 ft

Every other figure on that chart is a normal condition. Yuba's eighty feet is a full pool number, and this reservoir is not at full pool for most of the year. The chart above this one is the honest picture of what is actually in it.

This is a regulatory finding, not a warning notice, and it is the most consequential fact on this page.

Category 5, impaired, TMDL required 303(d) LIST

Utah's environmental quality division assesses every named water in the state. Its record for this one, assessment unit UT-L-16030003-007_00, named Sevier Bridge Reservoir (Yuba Lake), reads :

Assessment	5: TMDL Required (Impaired 303d list)
Impairment	Use Class 2A (Frequent Primary Contact Recreation): Harmful algal blooms
TMDL required for	Harmful Algal Blooms
TMDL approved	none

In plain words: the state has determined this reservoir does not meet its water quality standard for the use class that covers swimming, the cause is harmful algal blooms, a cleanup plan is required, and none has been approved .

That is a standing finding about the water body. It is not the same as an advisory being in force today. Advisories are issued by the local health department and come and go through a season .

The Sevier River is impaired above and below Yuba too, on separate records and for different causes: sediment, phosphorus and dissolved solids on one reach, E. coli on another, pH and temperature on two more .

The two river gauges are the good ones. Above the reservoir, USGS 10217000 on the Sevier River below the San Pitch . Below the dam, USGS 10219000 near Juab . Both update within the hour and both are marked provisional until the survey reviews them. Read together they show the reservoir being drawn down.

Storage is monthly, not live. The card above reads the federal soil conservation service's reservoir record for Sevier Bridge . It publishes acre feet once a month. Its daily series is advertised but returns nothing, which is why this page prints a month and a year beside the figure instead of pretending it is current to the hour.

There is no live public elevation for this reservoir A REAL GAP

The federal survey ran a gauge on the reservoir itself, site 10218500. Its record ends in 1995 . Utah publishes reservoir levels through an interactive application that exposes no data feed. The irrigation company that owns the dam runs live telemetry, and its published interface requires a key it issues on request.

So the percentage the state park shows on its own page is the most current public number, and it is on a web page rather than in a feed . This page links it rather than guessing.

Recreation · 03

Getting on the water

Two ramps, four camping areas, one of them boat in only, and three separate roads in.

The whole reservoir

Centre of the bounding box of the USGS National Hydrography water body polygon for Sevier Bridge Reservoir, GNIS feature 1445447. The polygon centroid is not used because the reservoir bends around a neck and its centroid lands on dry ground.

Open in Google Maps →Directions →

Facility coordinates from Utah's parks and boat ramp datasets, the dam from the federal dam register, landforms from the federal names database.

The park's areas sit on different sides of a reservoir that pinches almost shut in the middle, so the road you take depends on which end you want.

For	Route
Oasis, the main ramp	Interstate 15, exit 202, then east on the county road
Painted Rocks	Utah 28 from Nephi or Levan, on the east side
North Beach and West Beach	Temple Road, a gravel road running east from the north end
Eagle View	By boat only

Eagle View is filed in the state's own parks data as "Eagle View Boat-in Campground" , which is why the map for it offers no street view. There is no street.

Fishing · 04

Fishing Yuba

Eleven species, double limits, and a fishery the state rebuilds by hand every year.

Opens a live Google map. Pick a species, get the rule, the named spots and what people throw at it.

Walleye

602,056 of them went in during 2025

Established here, says the state

Northern pike

The only one here that breeds unaided

Spawns here. Not a kill rule

Tiger muskie

Sterile, so every one was put here

One over 40 inches, and only one

Wiper

Best near the dam, says the state

Fifty thousand stocked a year

Yellow perch

Legal as bait on this water

Rebounded with the water

Channel catfish

What the setline rule is for

Setlines are legal here

Smallmouth bass

Present, and largemouth are not

Confirmed caught

Rainbow trout

Not what this water is managed for

Stocked once recently

Tiger trout

A hybrid, and a maze of a fish

Listed as possible

Common carp

Caught on worms, used as cut bait

Bait for the catfish

Utah sucker

Not the June sucker

Native, and forage

Drawings are illustrations of the named species, not photographs of fish caught here. Presence and abundance come from the state wildlife agency's own species record for this water , corroborated by Utah State Parks and the Bureau of Land Management . Where to fish and what to throw come from angler sources, marked with letters instead of numbers.

The guidebook entry for this water is four lines long. Here it is, complete :

Yuba Reservoir, Juab and Sanpete counties 2026 GUIDEBOOK

"Limits for all species except for tiger muskellunge are double the statewide limits listed on page 7."
"Limit 1 tiger muskellunge over 40 inches."
"All tiger muskellunge under 40 inches must be immediately released."
"Setline fishing is allowed."

Do not assume the size limits double too READ IT CAREFULLY

Doubling a bag limit is obvious. The statewide walleye limit is 10, so at Yuba it is 20. But the statewide walleye rule is "10, only 1 over 24 inches" , and the guidebook never says whether that one over 24 inches becomes two.

This page is not going to invent the answer. Read the rule as written and ask the wildlife agency if the over size part matters to you.

Setlines, and perch as bait ONLY A FEW WATERS

Yuba is one of five waters in Utah where a setline is legal . The conditions: "You may not fish with more than one setline.", "A setline may not contain more than 8 hooks." and "Setlines may not be mechanically retrieved." A separate setline permit is required on top of a fishing licence .

Dead yellow perch are legal as bait here, on a list that names "Yuba" alongside Deer Creek, Jordanelle and Utah Lake .

Northern pike here are a sport fish, not a target DIFFERENT FROM OTHER WATERS

Utah does have a kill on sight rule for northern pike. It attaches to the Provo River, the Provo River Delta and Utah Lake tributaries . It does not attach to Yuba. The Yuba entry has no pike line at all, so the doubled statewide limit governs and you may release them.

If you have read our Utah Lake or Flaming Gorge page and carried the kill rule across in your head, that is exactly the mistake this box exists to stop.

Rules change every year and this page is not the guidebook. There was an emergency change here in 2022 that set a flat 20 fish aggregate; it expired on 30 September 2022 and at least one commercial fishing report site was still publishing it as current law three years later. Read the current guidebook .

In July 2022 the state wildlife agency issued an emergency rule to let anglers take more fish before the water ran out. The reasoning was printed plainly: "Yuba Reservoir is expected to experience low water levels this year and fish loss is expected due to adverse conditions. The intention of the regulation change is to liberalize harvest and provide anglers the opportunity to harvest additional fish prior to fish loss, if loss occurs."

Two years later they went back and found the fishery had held: "Water levels in the reservoir have been astonishingly low over the last few years, raising concerns about the survival and abundance of species such as walleye. When our biologists were out targeting northern pike and tiger muskie, they were excited to find an abundance of walleye that were 16 to 19 inches. Of the 37 walleye caught, 27 were in this size range."

And in 2026: "Perch numbers rebounded with the few good water years we had and may provide anglers with an additional opportunity."

It is held up by stocking. The state stocking record for this water shows walleye and tiger muskie put in every year, with more than 600,000 walleye in 2025 alone .

Year	What went in
2026	67,839 walleye, 4,000 tiger muskie
2025	602,056 walleye, 50,040 wiper, 4,000 tiger muskie
2024	254,000 walleye, 57,120 tiger muskie, 50,220 wiper, 4,998 rainbow trout, 470 channel catfish

Northern pike are never stocked here . They reproduce on their own: "By early March, the majority of the reservoir is open water, and the Northern Pike are beginning to spawn up lake." No agency source we could find says how they arrived.

Recreation · 05

What to watch for

Ramps with a number on them, a standing impairment listing, and a lot of soft ground.

The ramps close, and there is a number for it 23% AND 7%

"Boats can not launch from Painted Rocks at less than 23% capacity and at Oasis at less than 7%." Check the park page for today's percentage and today's ramp status before you tow .

At the bottom end this stops being about convenience: rangers have reported "double axel boat trailers falling off the end of the ramp when attempting to launch" .

Listed impaired for algal blooms SWIMMING

The state has formally assessed this reservoir as not meeting its water quality standard for frequent primary contact recreation, with harmful algal blooms as the cause, and no cleanup plan approved .

That is a standing finding. Whether an advisory is in force on the day you visit is a separate question, and the environmental quality division publishes that . Its own caution is worth repeating: "Conditions may change quickly. Check before entering the water and know how to spot a harmful algal bloom."

Open the Yuba monitoring page →

Soft mud and deep sand VEHICLES AND FEET

When the water drops it leaves a long soft margin. The wildlife agency's low water guidance is to "use caution accessing the shore (soft substrate mud are present in areas)" and "Do not drive on dark (wet) sand during low water conditions."

At North Beaches the sand is the hazard even at normal levels: "Note four-wheel drive is recommended, there is deep sand in areas of this campground."

Mussels, and what the rule actually is AIS

Yuba is not listed as mussel infested. The state's position is that "the presence of quagga and zebra mussels in Utah is currently limited to Lake Powell" . That is not the same as saying the water has been cleared, and no agency publishes a per water status for Yuba.

The rules still apply: "Boaters are required to stop at all operating AIS inspection stations." And if you have been on an infested water: "If you are arriving from another state/country or have been at a mussel-infested waterbody (such as Lake Powell) in the last 30 days, you have two options for decontamination prior to launch at any Utah waterbody."

Fees apply whether or not anyone is there SELF PAY

Utah State Parks: "Please remember all fees apply, even if the entrance station isn't staffed"

A reservoir built for crops, listed as unsafe to swim in, and full of fish somebody has to put back every year.

Fathom Restoration is a Utah 501(c)(3) that runs volunteer dive cleanups and is built to pull what does not belong out of Utah water, statewide.

Donate to Protect Yuba

Every figure on this page is quoted from the source named beside it.

YUBA

What Yuba is

A privately owned irrigation reservoir that a state park sits on

The single most important thing to know before you tow a boat here