The last time I fished the Truckee River in April the banks were blanketed with 2-3ft of snow. Naturally as the warmer weather arrived the majority of the snow melted leaving only the highest peaks with plenty of powder. Nevertheless California continues to get rain and even snow in May. The more the merrier.
The flows I fished were at 1100CFS with a 200CFS difference from my last visit. There was a subtle noticeable difference that forced me to rethink the spots that I had previously found fish in. I found that the flows were just at that the level where a lot of the boulders in the middle of the river would be better holding spots than the edges. This made fishing difficult as it was both near impossible to get a good presentation into the sweet spots and land fish without them racing downstream.
Most of the fish I hooked were caught in long soft runs or soft seams. I didn’t find nearly as many fish fishing the edges as I had done in April. Most of the fish I landed where smaller however I did hook into a few good ones that I lost to the fast current. The fish were only taking mayfly nymphs primarily BWOs and March Browns. There was an epic BWO hatch in an area where I saw tons of birds flying around and picking off flies however I didn’t see a single fish rise.
I covered quite a bit of water and explored some new spots which made up for the slow fishing. I have a good feeling that a lot of rivers and streams will start fishing really good as soon as we get some stable warm weather. Until then the Truckee River remains as a high flow decent to good fly fishing favorite.
