October 1, 2022 Fly Fishing Report from the Truckee River and Pyramid Lake!
With the opener for Pyramid Lake happening today, Saturday October 1st, and the Truckee River and local lakes fishing better by the day, you’ve got some seriously good options for fishing right now. We don’t know what’s been better this week – the weather or the fishing. Either way we recommend not missing out and making it a point to get outside.
Truckee River Fly Fishing Report & Forecast
The river continues to fish well this week. While we’ve mostly been seeing smaller fish, you never know when you will tie into a serious trout, so always be on your game. With the majority of our water coming out of Boca reservoir we still recommend fishing in the canyon, as the stretch along Glenshire is currently sitting at about 40 CFS while the lower river is at 460 CFS thanks to an additional 367 out of the reservoir. We are not sure how much longer they will be able to keep this up as Boca continues to drop rapidly, but for now we are happy to see flows at Hirschdale and Farad stay basically the same that they’ve been all summer. Eventually we predict that they will switch releases and start letting water out of Donner Lake instead which should help the upper section of river. The water coming out of Boca has some serious turbidity to it so through Hirschdale where the water is dirty, you may try using attractor nymphs such as stoneflies, October caddis, worms, and eggs. By the time it reaches Floriston it clears back up a bit and your standard smaller nymphs such as perdigons, zebra midges and small caddis pupa will start being more effective once again. The streamer bite continues to pick up as well and fish are a bit more willing to move on the larger offerings recently, especially during low light hours, overcast days or mornings when fog is present. fish are still holding in various water types, slow, fast, and everything in between, so take your time and fish anything that looks like it could hold a fish, because it probably is!
Little Truckee Fly Fishing Report & Forecast
The LT has been seeing great flows for a few weeks now, and as expected is fishing incredibly well. With good dry fly fishing in the mornings on midges and mid-day on PMD’s and BWO’s if you like to fish on top, now’s the time to be fishing here. The nymphing game remains consistent as well and tight lining bugs imitating PMD’s, BWO’s, caddis, worms, midges or eggs has been excellent throughout the entire day with no clear window of better fishing except maybe towards the evening when the sun goes over the hill. As per usual, 6x tippet (or lighter) is the name of the game out here and a good degree of stealth will be required to catch these picky fish, so bring your A game.
Pyramid Lake Fly Fishing Report & Forecast
With the opener for Pyramid happening today (10/1) - we will be switching gears on our weekly reports and from here on out we will no longer be reporting on our local still water fishing and focus on this amazing fishery once again.
We are now in another exciting season at Pyramid Lake, and while in all truth the opener isn’t quite as significant for the fly angler, it’s got us looking forward to those bitter cold days, bobber dunks and 20 pound fish 10 feet off the shore in another couple of months. With fish still hanging in deep water out of reach for all but those willing to use heavy jigged “flies” with 1-2 oz. weights fast sinking lines on float tubes, this time of year will be the best time to focus on trolling or jigging on a boat until the weather changes and fish come in tight to the shore, which is typically around December, until then prepare yourself to be jealous of all of those boat anglers having 100 fish days sticking monstrous fish that haven’t seen fisherman all summer.
Early mornings at Pyramid, and a whole new season of gearing up for LCT
Meanwhile fly anglers will be lucky to see double digit days early on and due to the overtly heavy flies needed to reach the depth of the fish, in our honest opinion, you’d be better off leaving the fly rod on the shore and using heavy jigging rods with 2-3 oz. jigs and a fish finder to have good numbers early season. October is when the Tui Chub spawn and if you’re lucky enough to find a bait ball of these forage fish, you will most certainly find some cutthroat hanging below them. Locating this natural phenomenon will be your best shot on finding consistent trout fishing if you are fishing off of a small watercraft, but on a lake the same size of Lake Tahoe, it’s easier said than done. Needless to say, we are extremely excited about what lies ahead for this lake this year with the fish seeming to get larger every year, this truly is a world class fishery that shouldn’t be missed and if you haven’t fished out here on fly gear, you’ve got to make it a point to do so.. Although, we might recommend waiting a few months!
Stop by the shop and see our expanded selection of flies for Pyramid - and check out our wider selection of Spey rods for your fall fishing adventures.
- Miles
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