High Sierra Trout
 
Great Weekend
 
Gary drove up from San Francisco late Friday night to fish with me this weekend.  We hit the Truckee River Saturday morning around 10, when the temperature finally got above freezing.  It has been very cold here recently, with ice present along the bank all day long.  The fishing started out very slowly, we were at a spot where I had caught a handful of fish Friday afternoon, but we didn’t hook anything.  Later in the day we fished a spot further upriver, and I caught a nice rainbow right away on a size 16 Psycho Prince (pictured below).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                               Pretty rainbow
 
 
We fished up through the rest of the stretch without anymore action, then tried a spot a little further up that I haven’t fished in a while.  We fished hard, but caught nothing at first.  Eventually I hooked up with a strong rainbow that put up a good long fight (pictured below).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                              
                              Another good one
 
 
I had to leave the river around 2:30 to go to work, but Gary kept fishing and finally caught an 18’’ rainbow on a red Copper John.  We worked hard for our few fish, battling iced up guides and numb feet all day long.
Sunday morning Dan picked us up at 7 and we headed down to the East Fork of the Walker River near Bridgeport, CA.  Dan had fished there on Thursday and caught lots of fish on dries, so we made the two hour drive to try to repeat his performance.  We got to the river at around 9:30 and spotted rising fish right away.  There were some tiny midges on the water, but we started off fishing larger parachute patterns and got into fish right away.  I was the first to hook up, catching the nice brown pictured below on my third drift of the morning.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                     First fish of the day
 
We were fishing a small pool that was absolutely LOADED with fish, the fishing wasn’t exactly easy, but if we were able to get a good drift over a rising fish it would usually result in a strike.  We fished the pool for about two hours until the fish stopped eating our flies, but not before landing several browns and a couple of rainbows.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dan even managed to hook a nasty, dead sunfish that was snagged on a rock in midstream.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                      Catch of the day
 
 
We decided to cruise down the highway, checking out pools we could see from the road for rising fish.  We found a couple, including one that had some big browns coming to the surface.  These fish were about 20” long, but were very spooky.  We managed to catch a couple of the smaller fish that were also rising, I got one nice one that was long and skinny (pictured below).  Dan hooked a big one on a dropper but it quickly broke him off.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                      
                                   Scrappy brown
 
 
We looked at a couple of other spots and then drove down to the catch-and-release area on the Nevada side.  We ran into some people in the parking lot who informed us that the fishing had been slow, with a few fish hooked on streamers, but no risers.  We unanimously decided to head back to California so we could continue to fish dries.  We went back to the first spot hoping that the fish would be feeding again, and they were.  We hooked a couple, then the fish seemed to grow wary of our offerings.  I decided to tie on some 7X and a tiny parachute Trico pattern, and it was an immediate success.  Gary switched his rig to match mine and we both caught a couple more fish.  We finished up the day at the big pool below the Bridgeport Reservoir dam.  Hundreds of dead and dying sunfish were washing down out of the reservoir (pictured below).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                Weird
 
 
I’m not sure what was causing the die-off, maybe the water in the reservoir got too cold for them. Gary caught a couple more browns in the run below the big pool, then we called it a day.  Today was absolutely epic, we landed about 50 fish between the three of us and all but two of them were on dry flies.  Most were in the 10-13” range, but we did hook some bigger ones.  Gary hooked a fat brown about 18” long that calmly sucked down his parachute Adams.  The fish charged around the pool, occasionally coming to the surface to show us his buttery yellow sides before spitting the hook.  We had the entire California side of the river to ourselves, what a day!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Monday, November 26, 2007