Fished the Truckee River yesterday just below its confluence with the Little Truckee down from Boca Reservoir for a couple hours after getting skunked on the Little Truckee. The big forest fires down in Butte County and the Big Sur were sending a LOT of smoke into this part of the Sierras, just east of Truckee.
Earlier in the day, just a few miles away on the Little Truckee, the air quality was pretty good.
By 5:00 p.m. the sky had darkened considerably, and the sunlight filtered to a reddish tinge.
The sun a bit after 5:00.
Before I started, I had the opportunity to talk to a local fellow who fishes this stretch of the river regularly. Over several hours in the late morning to early afternoon, he had landed eight trout, a mix of bows and browns, and figured he had missed that many again, fishing mostly a prince nymph. Since he was taking a lunch break and was undecided about where he was going to fish after his break, I just headed down to the river.
In a couple hours, fishing a size 18 two tone olive and black copper john, I caught three fish - two small rainbows and one that I lost just as I got him close. The little guys were in the 6-8" bracket and the bigger one went about 13".
The Truckee certainly does look like an interesting river to fish from Truckee down to the Nevada stateline. Great variety of water, and most of it just looks like trout. The short section that I could cover in a couple hours was a mix of deep riffles and bouldered pocket water, with a couple pretty good holes. Didn’t feel like I was getting dialed into this kind of fishing very well, but was happy to end the day without being totally skunked.
Your experience on the Truckee was similiar to mine. 2 or 3 small trout in the 8-10’’ range no consistent hatch or surface feeding going on. There was one big whirlpool spot that had some trout rising consistently, but some other fisherman was fishing there. I walked away with the same feeling of not fishing the river correctly. Maybe next time. Caught my trout on a pheasant tail and a bottom roller. I think I will try to lengthen my leader and add more weight next time.
Fished this river last Saturday (7/19). I started at the first access point below Truckee (at the end of East river street), and worked my way down to the big hwy 40 bridge.
My experience was basically the same as the two above.
When one of the armada of rafters and tubers didn’t float right over the spot I was fishing, I was able to catch smaller fish (8-10") pretty consistantly all day, with a few in the 12" range sprinkled in. My best luck was with a combo of a size 16 tan birds nest as the upper nymph, and a size 18 iron sally as the lower nymph, fished about 7’ below a small indicator using a BB sized split shot about 12" above the first fly (adjusted lengths slightly for different water).
Even with a few small hatches throughout the day, I never saw any surface action. Water temps were between 70 and 73 degrees all day (yikes!), even in deeper water, so I was able to wet wade without any trouble.
I was surprised to even find any trout in water this warm. If the river stayed consistantly cooler, I bet this could be a GREAT trout fishery.
Hadn’t thought of it before reading your post, but maybe the advice to fish the Truckee late in the day is based on avoiding the raft and canoe crowd ??
Only had one small flotilla of rafts go by when / where I fished it, quite a way down from where you were.
Glad you found some action, even if it was with smaller fish. That river really does scream “trout,” although with 70F water temps I would expect it to be a murmur.
The floating traffic did decrease as the day wore on. Most of them were nice enough to try and steer clear of where I was fishing. Of the ones that didn’t, some were too ignorant and weren’t watching downstream, some were just plain jerks and didn’t care, but most were flat drunk.
On that note - One of the last groups I saw was a small raft with three blond, bikini’d teenage girls, and you could say they’d had way more than one too many. They floated just in front of me, right over the spot I was fishing (I was annoyed, to say the least). Once they were a little bit past me, one of them yelled, “Sorry! This will make you feel better!”. I had a, shall we say, girls gone wild moment! :shock: All three of them too! They thought it was pretty funny. I didn’t really mind that I had to change fishing spots after that.
I did have two small kids run into me with their raft, almost knocked me into the river. I would have traded for your girls gone wild moment staight up.
