The river has seen a good drop in flows this week and has begun to run quite a bit more clear than in the past few weeks. This will be the case along the entire system, from here in Truckee all the way through Reno. It’s hard to tell if we are just seeing a temporary drop in flows due to cooler air temps, or if we are indeed past peak run off already. My educated guess would be the latter as the surrounding mountains are beginning to show a lot of dirt, and most of the remaining snowpack is concentrated along the peaks. That said, if the flows do continue to decline, it will drop slowly from here through early summer. However, for now it’s safe to say that we are still in run off, and we likely won’t see the river resume its median flows until early June. While you may think that the increased visibility is a good thing, it has actually made the fishing a bit more difficult compared to a couple of weeks ago. The combination of high water, cold temps and good visibility can make the fishing tough. But the trout have to eat!

It will be important to make sure you’re mixing in some smaller offerings paired with the same run-off flies we’ve been preaching about in the last reports. Stones, worms, crawdads and eggs are going to continue to make for great attractors and will certainly catch plenty of fish, but the baetis, midges, and march browns are definitely on the menu right now, as the flows are a little lower than expected. This is mostly because there are less larger bugs getting dislodged by the current, and because the smaller offerings will be easier to see for the time being. We have still been able to find success fishing 2x or 3x tippet for our larger bugs, and 3x or 4x should be sufficient for anything size 14 or smaller. Where we’ve seen the biggest changes in the fishing would be along Glenshire Drive, where flows dropped from just over 1,000 CFS to around 700 as of today. This change will spread fish out a bit more, and anglers should begin to try and expand their search beyond just concentrating on positions that are tight along the banks. Try some faster moving water, similar to where you may find trout during the summer. You may be surprised where you will find some of these trout right now.

The section of river below the confluence has changed far less as the Boca dam has ramped up its releases to 300 CFS, meaning the flows in the canyon are similar to where they have been over the last few weeks and fish should continue to hold tighter to banks or in the few pockets, riffles or the softer water found in any given run. But with similar water temps to what’s upstream, it’s worthwhile to begin probing some of the faster water.