This week Truckee will see its first significant amount of snow fall for the ‘23/’24 winter. The forecast is calling 5-9 inches expected on Saturday with a chance of another storm towards the middle of next week. Let’s hope Mother Nature keeps the good times rolling and we see the next few months make up for lost time. This amount of snow will likely limit vehicle access on some sections of our rivers, most notably the Little Truckee.

This came at a great time with last week’s drop in flows out here, going from a very respectable 140 CFS to just over 50. These fish have had a long season of angling pressure this year with excellent extended conditions for the angler, and we are pleased to see them hopefully get a reprieve, even if for just a short while. Worry not, there are still a lot of great options for fishing right now. Currently, there are stellar flows on the entire Truckee River and Pyramid is slowly entering prime months. Fishing at Pyramid is likely to improve with some storms finally beginning to roll through. This is our favorite season to be on the water. The fish are big; the scenery is beautiful; the angling pressure is light. Happy New Year to everyone, we hope this year brings you lots of great days on the water and puts some big fish in the net!

The Truckee saw a bit of a decrease in both the flows and the temperatures this week. We suspect this will make the fish hold in a particular water type that we refer to as winter water. Winter water can be described as slow-moving water with deep pools, ideally where a seam, a slow riffle at the head or a bubble line through the main body is present. While the fish don’t want to hold in fast water, they are mostly always looking for some degree of current. Water that is at a slow walking speed or less is about right, with some fish possibly pushing into a bit faster water on warmer afternoons when the temps come up a few degrees. While you can find fish in the frog water this time of year (in fact this is often where the bigger browns sit), it is tough to fish this water with a typical nymph set up and this is where you would want to focus on throwing streamers. With the browns being post spawn at this point, streamer fishing is a great option to try and find some of those fish looking for a high calorie meal. For those looking to nymph, we encourage you to put the tight line rigs away this time of the year and stick with the indicator this winter. This will help you fish the winter water described above with a better presentation. The bugs haven’t changed this week, and we recommend using stones, worms, eggs, BWO’s and midges. As mentioned in previous reports, this will stay the same until we see March Browns (our first mayfly of the spring) start to pop. While there is one other bug of note around, the winter stone, I personally haven’t had a whole lot of luck on these nymphs. They are in the system and fish do eat them. That said, while I haven't had a ton of success with them, others here in the shop swear by the winter stone. A size 16-18 black copper john would be a great imitation for these much smaller members of the stonefly family.