Clear, cold water with excellent flows and active bugs have created ideal fishing conditions on the Truckee. The hatches this week have been plentiful and varied, with a lot of the bugs delayed from coming off this spring coinciding with the typical hatches for early July. The spring hatches such as March Browns, BWO’s, Green Drakes, Yellow Sallies, and the ever-plentiful midges have been mingling with the typical summer hatches of PMD’s, Caddis, Carpenter Ants and Golden Stoneflies creating a variety of bugs on the menu for the trout. This amount of biodiversity can either make fishing much easier or a bit more difficult depending if the fish get keyed in on a specific hatch or not. In general, I tend to think it should open-up your fly selection a bit and most representations of these various hatches should work with a good drag free drift and any fly in the ballpark. Although if you do see a particular bug hatching it would probably be wise to switch over to match that bug. If you’re not sure where to start, we encourage you to use a seine and hold it in the current to see what bugs are actually “in the drift” as this will be the best way to know what the fish are seeing throughout the day and will likely increase your catch rate. 

Remember, the goal of fly selection is to match the size, shape and color of the natural. When matching the hatch, remember that it’s size, profile and color - in that order. You don’t need to know the Latin name of the bug to be a good fly angler. You just have to be observant and have good fundamentals in terms of presentation. The bite window remains wide open throughout the day thanks to the cold water. In theory you can find fish all day long, although we have seen the peak window mid-morning from about 8-11 here on the main river. The bite might slow down mid-day when the sun is high and no hatch is present. You may see that bite pick up in the afternoon, or if you see some bugs starting to hatch. On the upper river, we have yet to see the prolific caddis hatches during last light. However, with the warmer weather starting up, this should be right around the corner. When it happens, it will be some of the most consistent dry fly fishing our river has to offer.