The flows on the Truckee have been steadily dropping and in just a week it has come down nearly 400 CFS throughout the entire California side of the river. We haven’t seen this affect the fishing negatively, and in fact, the fishing has been seemingly better as water temps rise into these trout’s ideal range, increasing their activity during all points in the day. As temps come up, we have noticed fish begin their typical summer holding patterns, and fishing medium speed water, riffles, pocket water and the likes will be increasingly effective. This means that the euro nymphing setup will be a good bet especially along sections like here in town, Glenshire Drive, or Hirschdale where more of this water type is present.

If fishing in the canyon section down highway 80, using an indicator to reach more water will still be wise as flows remain around 800 CFS at the Farad gauging station. We’ve began to see the emergence of PMD’s in the area, and while the dry fly bite is probably still a few weeks out for these guys, nymphing them has been putting quite a few fish in the net for us. We are continuing to fish a very mixed bag of fly patterns right now as it seems like the fish are not really keyed in on any one hatch and good go-to patterns for us over the last few weeks have been; stonefly nymphs in both brown or yellow in sizes 8-12, Pheasant tails in sizes 14-18, split case PMD’s in sizes 16-18, Perdigons in sizes 16-18, Juju Baetis in sizes 18-20 and olive caddis patterns in sizes 14-16 to name a few. With this weekend’s spring storm expected, try stripping streamers in the 2–4-inch range in olive, black or brown to entice some of the big dogs our river is known for, and we recommend using 1x-2x mono for this to lessen the chance of breaking off when lightning strikes.