Little Truckee River - Fish Habitat Improvement Project

Trout Unlimited is leading a project on the Little Truckee River that will restore over two miles of river that supports world-class fishing for wild brown and rainbow trout. As locals say, "90 of the fish occupy 10% of the water." This famous tailwater is heavily used by anglers, and expanding suitable habitat in the river and dispersing angling use are two priorities for the Little Truckee River Fish Habitat Improvement Project, which will be constructed in September 2015. TU will add over 100 trees, 250 large boulders and excavate new backwater habitats to create new habitat that benefit wild trout at all stages of their life history.

Ever shown up to 15 cars in the parking lot below the Stampeded dam, hopefully this project opens the river up! The video is of the entire river section between Boca and Stampede Reservoirs, the middle of the video gives a birds-eye view of the habitat TU added, good work TU!  Note: best viewed in 1080p.

As if needed an excuse to play with my new toy.

Little Truckee - BWO Blitzkrieg

First of all, MY RANT: The parking lot by the dam was so full on Wednesday I couldn't even park. I've never seen it that full, must have been 20 cars. I refuse to fish combat style next to bung-holes from SF who only come up for the spawn and do nothing but run redds. Hey, we all want to put a 27" brown in the net, but some of these guys are over the top relentless on them. Sorry, had to get that out of the way.

Due to the aforementioned outbreak of Nazi Zombies, I was forced to fish water I rarely ever fish (for a reason), just above the meadows...Why? Because nobody else fishes it. Relatively speaking, not many fish lie there, especially at low flows, but when BWO's go on a frigg'n blitzkrieg rampage like they're doing now, you'd be surprised at what's holding in even the shallowest riffles.

7x and #20 barbless BWO's duns = lots of lost fish. Some busted me, some just came unbuttoned, but I'll be damned if it wasn't a blast. So much action, many in the net, but many more long-line releases. Check out this bow and compare it to the picture above. Its a Boca Reservoir bow, the fisheries biologist told me the strain last year, I don't recall the name but think they may be Eagle Lake fish. As you can see from the photo, they're much different than the resident bows of the LT. These guys generally only follow the Kokanee up to gorge on their orgy: they differ from resident LT bows in that they're predominately silver, their spots stop at the lateral line, they don't have white on the tips of their pectoral, pelvic or anal fins and...THEY JUMP. By contrast, resident LT bows are brownish red with an orange underbelly, their spots go to their belly, they have white tipped fins and they NEVER jump, rather, they give tons of head shakes and bull-dog you like a brown.

Poor browns, the water master F'ed their spawn, last week. Flows were cut day after day until they reached their "minimum" flow of 32cfs, so the browns left the runs which went from 18" deep to only 5" deep and are holding in the deeper holes, 3' deep and deeper. I just watched them pair up and fight each other, pretty cool stuff. Here is a brief resident LT bow battle

Little Truckee River - Dry Fly Action

School is back in and crowds have subsided. I finally took a full day off work, dusted off the 4wt and 7x and hit the LT, first time this year, but then again, I wait until the crowds are gone. I have only been able to manage short evening sessions the past 6-months on local watersheds until today. Today, I got a full day in....well, it was going to be a full day but became a half day when the water master felt it appropriate to drop the LT to 17cfs...ugh! What's the purpose of having a recommended flow of 32cfs if they can drop the river below that? UPDATE: David Lass of Truckee TU explained it's not a required minimum flow, and only a recommendation. The low flows are due to a 6-year dam inspection; unfortunately they found some things that needed repair and are working on it night and day. Until flows get back up over 30cfs, please avoid the LT for the time being. They should be back up close to 100cfs soon, hopefully in time for the big Boca Reservoir spawn runs this fall.
Check out the exposed river bed, 20 minutes prior it was under water...all that trout food is dead. Prior to the flows dropping, I managed some fun dry fly fishing and sight nymphing while the river was @ 106cfs.

The AM was VERY slow and nothing was coming off. Though I prefer to dry fly fish the LT, if there is no hatch...I'll occassionally go for an SJW (without the San Juan Shuffle part, which is illegal on some watersheds). Sometimes you have to use what they're feeding on, and certain parts of this river are full of Annelids.Luckily BWO's started popping in fishable numbers by 11am; from then on it was BWO dries and nymphs only! QUESTION TO THE AUDIENCE: Anyone know why LT bows are so much darker than BT bows, other than the obvious...cause they're a different strain. Does anyone know the specific strains and/or any other reasons for why they differ so much? I caught this BT bow later the same afternoon, and it really struck me how different the two fish really are in color, number of speckles, shape and build. And another thing, BT bows always jump, LT bows seldom do.

BT bow LT Bow

All fish were heavier than normal, thanks to good flows all year (except the 1 day this year I decide to go). Oh well, I'll be back many times between now and mid December. I had an Osprey splash-down 20 feet from me today. It missed the fish, but what a sight! Of the fish I netted, half had what appeared to be talon scars across their backs. You'll see a closeup on the 2nd fish in the video.