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Past year was season of the trout

Bruce Ajari
Sierra Sun

This past general trout season was a pretty memorable season for the Truckee River and the rest of the area. It was probably the best early season that I have seen in all the years I have been fishing the Truckee River.

With the low snowpack that we had last year, the run-off was virtually non existent. The water never seemed to get off-color like it does most early seasons when the snowpack is closer to normal.

As a result, the insects seemed more abundant and the fish were also very large and accommodating. Perhaps the lack of sediment in the run-off saved many insects from being killed. Maybe it was because the water temperatures were warmer in general because of the minimal run-off from the snowpack. Whatever the reason, the early-season insect hatches were very prolific.



The size of the fish during the early season was also remarkable. It prompted one local guide to ponder, “Are there any small fish in the Truckee this year?”

What most anglers were amazed about was the quality dry fly fishing that was available during the early season. The various hatches of mayflies were abundant.



In the area where I frequently fish, I had never seen so many Pale Morning Duns hatch. In fact, I could not even recall seeing this particular mayfly in this section of the river.

The best part was that once the water warmed sufficiently, the large fish were eager to feed on the surface. This made for some great days fishing dry flies.

The Green Drake hatch was not real consistent for me, and really has not been over the years. I heard that other anglers had some pretty banner days on the Green Drake in other parts of the river. It always amazes me that certain parts of the river will produce better than others. As an angler, you need to be aware of this fact to increase your chances of success.

The Little Yellow Stone hatch was very good and large fish seemed to rise readily to their imitations. This has probably been our best hatch to catch large fish the past several years.

When the Carpenter Ants began to fly, a dry ant imitation was outstanding for a period of a couple weeks. Large fish cannot seem to resist one of these morsels. I had one fish that I watched moved three feet from his ambush site to gobble in my ant imitation.

Smaller fish began to show as we got into July, but fishing was pretty good throughout the rest of the season due to the good stream flows. Because of the necessity of water needing to be released from Lake Tahoe, the flows were good because of the low snowpack and the state of the outlying reservoirs.

Anglers should be watching the snowpack this winter and hope that we have a normal or above normal winter to replenish the water in our storage reservoirs. Another dry winter could mean some very poor conditions for all of our waters next year.


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