While fall doesn’t officially start until the 22nd, it appears that it’s come a bit early this year. Is this a sign of the Super La Nina year everyone is talking about? We sure hope so. A huge winter would do a lot for this area and the businesses that rely on mother nature to do its thing. Fingers crossed! One thing we can say for certain is that this cool down period has really heated the fishing back up. As we head into one of two shoulder seasons that Truckee sees throughout a calendar year, this really is one of the best times to be fishing in the area. After the last hoorah of Labor Day weekend, we are into the “local’s summer” and we are really looking forward to so excellent fishing over the next few months as conditions look very promising. On the note of Labor Day, we are running a sale both in store and online, see all of the details on our website or in our weekly email. Thank you all for your support of our little fly shop!
September 4th Fly Fishing Report for the Truckee River, Little Truckee River
Fall Guided Trips
Autumn brings classic fall fly fishing conditions to our local rivers, making it the prime time to experience a guided half-day walk and wade trip with Trout Creek Outfitters. Whether you’re targeting eager trout during crisp morning hatches or mastering technical presentations through glassy runs, our expert guides are ready to put you on fish for an unforgettable autumn day on the water.
Truckee River Fishing Report
The Truckee fished well this week. Water temps have dropped substantially, and we can now fish all day without water temps hitting 68 degrees in most sections of river. However, we would still recommend avoiding the lower river (I.E. east of Sparks) for now. With the cooler water temps, we have seen fish move around a bit this week and we were catching fish in some pretty surprisingly slow water. This is when the indicator is an effective way to cover various water types, just be sure to adjust your depth and weight to match the run you’re fishing. Adjustments are a big key to success on this river due to its large variety of water types and the fish’s inclination to sit right on the bottom. Don’t be afraid to fish 8 or 9 feet under your indicator in some of these runs! With the cooler weather, we have been finding better success on larger fly patterns this week, catching fish on stonefly nymphs, crawdads, as well as BWO, PMD or caddis imitations up to a size 16. Quill body perdigon patterns like Matchstick Quills, Quilldigons, Spanish Bullets or Picky Eaters have been all working well down in the canyon. If fishing along Glenshire, consider fishing smaller patterns like zebra midges, Rainbow Warriors or Juju Baetis and downsize your tippet to 5x. The flows on the Truckee are still holding at 300 CFS in Glenshire and 500 in the canyon, but typically we see the releases out of Tahoe drop over the next few weeks as the rafting along 89 winds down. This won’t affect too much in the way of the fishing but will limit the options for those of you looking to float certain sections of the river. Usually, we see them offset this with larger releases out of Boca, which is sitting nice and full right now. Once this happens, it is an excellent time to focus your efforts down the hill and less so along Glenshire.
Recommended Flies for the Truckee River
Little Truckee Fishing Report
The Little Truckee is sitting at 43 CFS as of today. This is low but is also typical for this time of year. In general, with the excellent conditions on the main river right now, we would encourage anglers to focus their efforts on the Truckee and give these incredibly pressured fish a break while the flows are this low.
