The Truckee River is currently in great shape after last week’s weather and is only about 50 CFS higher than it was pre-storm. This, in-and-of-itself, will do little to change the fishing. But the drop in water temps it brought with it will mix things up a bit compared to the sunny “false spring” conditions of last week. With the warmer days ahead, we should see these temps slowly climb, but as for this week, we recommend fishing the slower tailouts and side water of deep buckets thoroughly, and dissecting any good winter runs carefully.

These fish are not yet sitting in anything faster than walking speed, and often we have been finding them at more of a crawling speed. This water will not often require a lot of weight to get you down, and using less weight can be advantageous to avoid getting hung up of the bottom. Recently we have been primarily using unweighted flies fished under our indicators with only a bit of split-shot. Doing this will make your flies present more naturally and keep them from wedging into rocks or snags. While we have also been using some smaller bead head mayfly and midge patterns, usually these are paired with a larger and more neutrally buoyant fly such as a worm or glowbug to add a bit of lift off the splitshot ideally keeping our presentation a few inches off the bottom.

The skwalas have been less active this week with the colder weather, but once things warm back up, we expect these guys to really kick into gear and anglers should have good shots using these imitations on top either by themselves or paired with a dropper for suspending nymphs in the skinnier water. These early season stoneflies can be found from the headwaters of the Truckee River to around West Reno. They will become far less prolific by the time you hit downtown due to diminished water quality and a siltier substrate.