Monday, August 11, 2014

Truckee River - Carpe Diem (EOT)

When its too hot to safely fish for trout....seize the day.  These fish are wary and tough to fool, they spoke easily and won't take anything other than a perfect presentation.  I find that by letting them discover the fly on the bottom, then giving it a slight 4" strip, then letting it sit works best.  They'll tail like a bonefish and the take is subtle so it really helps to see your quarry.  Believe it or not, this guy was the result of a blind cast in the current, he took it on the swing!  Prior to that I lost a couple pushing 20.  You'll want 2x or 3x strong hooks tied up for these babies as I'm learning, I need to get some myself!
 Carp feeding on crayfish in the shallows.
I think a trout die off could be occurring already east of town, in this section I walked up on a beautiful rainbow that wouldn't flush, I reached down, softly cradled it, picked it half way up and then let it go.  It appeared healthy but for the fact that it couldn't muster the energy to get away.  I think it was slowly asphyxiating in the mid 70's water.
 Baby crays are in the shallows by the thousands.  Where you find baby crays, you'll find carp gorging on them.  Carp are funny, they don't spend all their waking hours feeding, they'll gorge in the morning, then they'll sit it out and present themselves like motionless submarines visible from bridges and high vantage points.  Its practically useless to cast at them when they do this.  Its important to find fish actively feeding, cast well ahead and let them discover it with a short, deliberate "twitch" through the mud to imitate the motion of the abundant juvenile crayfish.
 This beaver must have been 70-80lbs, no joke!
 This is a great alternative to fishing in Reno/Verdi right now, and where else do you stand a good chance of hooking 30lb fish on a fly in fresh water?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Strange to hear the fish acting like that. Even in healthy water years the lower river regularly spikes briefly above 80 degrees many afternoons. Temps. are even higher below Derby Dam (and they don't have the option to move upstream), yet they are there and healthy every Fall. It's not so much the water temps down there as it is the low water (more stress) and consequently more aquatic vegetation with the extra penetrating sunlight (taking up more oxygen).

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