Conditions have quickly shifted from cold and stormy to warm and sunny over the last few days. Rain, snow and thunderstorms early in the week have now given way to sunshine. As things are expected to finally warm up in the long-term forecast, we anticipate the coming weeks to provide some of the best fishing of the year here on the Truckee. There has already been some great dry fly fishing during the storms and now we are getting temps back into the 70’s, it should only get better. Historically, May is the best month for throwing dries in our area with several different hatches all happening simultaneously, often providing a flurry of activity on top including hatches of BWOs, Caddis, PMDs, Yellow Sallies, and Green Drakes. While we have yet to see PMDs really kick up and no Sallies as of now, the cooler weather has made for some prolific BWO hatches and during the thunderstorms we’ve seen some Green Drakes coming off. We always found the Green Drakes keen to hatch during these stormy conditions and they didn’t disappoint this week!
May 8th Fly Fishing Report for the Truckee River, Little Truckee River
Spring Half-Day Guided Floats
Trade the long wade for a spring float on the Truckee. This is one of the best windows of the year, Drakes and Baetis bringing consistent dry fly chances and higher flows setting up the kind of streamer water this river is known for. Spring can bring some of the most exciting fishing of the year, and our guides know how to stay ahead of shifting conditions. It’s a short season, book a half-day float and make the most of it.
Truckee River Fishing Report
Things on the river are great right now. We saw a good recharge of water, and now flows are quickly settling back down to prime fishing conditions. Flows are right at average for this time of year, we’d call them high, but very much fishable. Hatches of baetis have been consistent and the green drakes are around enough to be able to use the emergers as a searching pattern on top, or the nymphs in an indicator set up. With the recent rain, worms will be another no-brainer this week. The variety of bugs around has the fish feeding on nymphs heavily with little discretion. This is where general purpose flies will often out fish their hatch specific counterparts, so long as they’re presented well. Even the streamer bite has been pretty damn good, with sculpin and crawdad patterns putting a lot of fish in the net this week. With the current water temps, the fish are a bit all over the place right now, so fish it all, you may be surprised where you’ll find fish.
Recommended Flies for the Truckee River
Little Truckee Fishing Report
We have begun to see the rainbows spawn heavily on the LT and we encourage any anglers heading out here to be familiar with the best practices when fishing a river during a trout spawn. Please avoid wading in any shallow riffles or tailout and keep a close eye on areas with cleaned off areas of gravel, often in an oval shape, where the trout have created their redds. Avoid walking on or even near these areas and do not target any fish that are exhibiting spawning behavior. While you can still fish out here ethically this time of year by specifically targeting fish in deeper buckets, this may be a good time to avoid fishing this river all together and instead fish the main river where the rainbows have already finished spawning. While this process can last for several weeks, typically it’s less than a month.
