Truckee River Fishing - June 2, 2018

Great start to the summer season! Flows were about 850-1000 cfs. The canyon section of the Truckee has recovered nicely from the drought, though it may take a few more years for the large fish to start showing up in numbers.

The "canyon" section of the river stretches between Hirschdale, CA to Verdi, NV. There are special regulations in place and the access into the canyon is tough for poachers and this area gets tons of pressure by fly fisherman, which makes it even harder for poachers. The result is good fishing, but wily fish that are not easy to catch.

Got this 20-21" brown in "New Zealand" type water that most fishermen skip. In New Zealand you would sight fish to large brown trout in ultra clear water, and it seemed that they held mainly in odd shallow spots in the river--in places where most people would wade right into. although I didn't have a tape measure, my elbow to finger tips is 18", and this fish extended beyond both my elbow and finger tips by about 1-2" on each end. The take was extremely subtle as you can see in the video.

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Fish were very active today! Only one brown, the rest were rainbows. It was about 50/50 between the #10 Rubber Legs on the dropper and the #14 GTI Caddis on the point. I started out euro nymphing with a 15' leader/sighter, but decided the water was too big and I wasn't quite in the mood to tight line, so I put on an indicator below the sighter, using the same Euro leader. 

~18-19" rainbow that put up a heck of a fight.

Finished the day at a strange spot that feels haunted and where I occasionally will hear strange noise and feel as if someone is watching me. Ghosts of the Donner Party? It seems there was a long time ago, a house or maybe hotel there, as there is an old forgotten road and an stone wall in the woods along the riverbank. There is even fallen utilities poles that some long ago storm blew down. Never caught any fish in that small section either--it seems the fish are scared of that spot as well, and stay away.