Truckee River and Pyramid Like Fly Fishing Report for March 18, 2022

Another excellent week of fishing in the Truckee area with stellar dry fly fishing on the Truckee and Pyramid Lake continues to kick out big fish. The other nearby waters are also in great shape, including the Yuba, Feather, Carson and Walker rivers to name a few. With only 60% of our average snowpack this year, we encourage you to focus on moving waters this spring while conditions allow it, as the late summer and fall will likely be a little spotty.

Truckee River Fly Fishing Report and Forecast

The Truckee has seen yet another week of surprisingly good dry fly fishing, which is not the norm for this river. Thick hatches of midges have been coming off throughout the day on an almost daily basis and mixed in with them have been BWO’s and an increasing number of Skwalas as well. Using a dry dropper set up with a Skwala adult and a BWO or midge dropper will be a fun way to fish the river at this time. If you’re seeing fish sipping midges, using a Griffith’s Gnat to imitate a midge cluster or other adult midge patterns can be a fun and often technical way to pick off these fish, and we’ve also found that dropping your tippet diameter down to 6x will greatly help your odds here.

When no hatches are present or if probing the deeper pools in the canyon section, resort to the failsafe indicator rig using heavy flies with additional weight and setting that indicator deep to find the fish feeding subsurface. We are right around the corner from a number of spring hatches to show including March browns, PMD’s, Caddis and a local favorite, the carpenter ant, and this is an exciting time of year for the Truckee angler.

Little Truckee Fly Fishing Report and Forecast

We have still seen patches of snow on the road out to the Little Truckee and a 4WD vehicle will still be required to access this area. The flows are still fluctuating on a daily basis here and have been anywhere from 55 cfs down to 35 cfs over the last week, but no matter how to shake it, this is too low and at this time we encourage you to not fish out here until we see flows come up to at least the 60’s, ideally in the 100’s.

Pyramid Lake Fly Fishing Report and Forecast

Pyramid continues to kick out some incredible fish this week and when fishing out here yesterday I hooked a fish estimated in the low to mid 20’s on a red midge dropped under a balanced leech. After a epic battle where it took me into my backing 3 times I got it right onto shore where after one unsuccessful attempt netting it, it managed to find a rock to wrap around and get my upper hook attached to, allowing it to bend out the midge and get away. The lesson of the story here is, if fishing off of a rock be very careful when you get those large fish near the shore, and while you think using two flies may up your odds this is why you see people only fish one fly with confidence, less tangles, less knots to fail and less likely to loose a fish in the rocks ... lesson learned!

We would also like to address some concerning reports about anglers becoming very aggressive about holding spots, often getting up at the early hours of the morning and putting gear out in an attempt to secure their spot for the day, and a number of fights ensuing among fisherman because of this. This new phenomenon from anglers is very disappointing to hear about, and as the popularity of this lake continues to grow, we hope you will help us continue to promote the inclusiveness and welcoming nature of the Pyramid Lake angling community that we’ve always seen over the decades. While it’s easy to get excited about the big fish found here, it’s important to remind yourself to relax, it’s just fishing. We would also like to say, to help avoid any confrontation and to find some less pressured water, we encourage you to spread out. Where I hooked that trophy fish yesterday, there where only 3-4 other anglers along the entire shoreline, you don’t have to fish at Pelican Point or the North Nets to find a trophy, these fish are everywhere!

Thanks for reading our weekly fishing report and forecast. We hope you have the chance to get out this week and enjoy the water. Give us a call or stop by the shop if you have any questions.

• Miles