The slow days spent on the river weren’t all for naught this week.  As I continue to explore the different sections of this amazing river system, I found some great looking new sections of river previously unknown. Although they might not have yielded fish this go-around, I’m very excited to head back to this newfound area when conditions change. That’s a big part of why the Truckee River continues to intrigue me year after year, I’ve been fishing this watershed avidly for over a decade and I continue to find new water, slightly different than anything I’ve come across before. The change in landscape from the headwaters out of Lake Tahoe down to the sections of river east of Sparks is so drastic and unique, and there’s enough incredible trout water to keep an angler busy for next to a lifetime.

The water along most of the system right now is cold and clear, until you get around Sparks and beyond where you will see clarity diminish and temps warm slightly. When fishing a section of water that appears “gin-clear” dropping your fly size down to a 18-20, going with finer tippet such as 5x-6x and using clear ‘thingamabobbers’ or white airlocks can help dramatically as fish will be increasingly skittish. Using indicators over the euro nymph set-up will be best right now for a few reasons, and in short it will help with presenting smaller flies suspended in slower moving water types at a further distance than euro nymphing can typically allow.

Look for fish mostly in the slower tail outs of long straight runs or slow moving, deep buckets. This is the season of BWO’s and midges, while the stones, worms and eggs take a backseat this time of year. We do expect to start seeing Skwala stoneflies begin there emergence here on the California side probably in the next month or so, and usually during the onset of this hatch the stonefly nymph bite will be amazing, with the dry fly bite being spotty from year to year, typically the best years for these early season bugs are those with low, clear water and warm springtime temps, that’s not looking like this case this year, but as anglers often are, we are optimistically hopeful. Even when water temps drop into the mid-30’s you can still get fish to move on a well-presented streamer, so if nymphing size 20’s on light tippet doesn’t sound appealing, covering water quickly with a streamer could produce a few big fish as long as you’re willing to keep moving.