Last weekend I fished the Truckee for the first time in over six weeks, my longest absence since I moved to Reno in 2005.  My wife and I took a 3,000 mile road trip to Houston where she’ll be working this summer.  The day after I flew back from Texas I started my summer internship with the Nevada Department of Wildlife in Elko (n. eastern NV) where I’m conducting stream surveys on small creeks in the north eastern quarter of Nevada.  We work mostly in the headwater creeks of the Humboldt River drainage which contain Lahontan cutthroat trout.  LCTs are in sad shape in Nevada as a whole due to habitat degradation and interbreeding with rainbows, but there are some small streams in remote mountain canyons that harbor small populations of pure strain LCTs.  We’ll also be surveying some streams that contain native redside trout, Yellowstone cutts, and the southernmost population of bull trout.  For the last two weeks we have been working on a very remote stream north of Great Basin National Park that is one of a few streams in the area that contain a genetically pure population of Bonneville cutts.  Surveying these remote streams is hard work.  Last week we hiked over twenty torturous miles in two days, mostly without the benefit of a trail, up narrow canyons clogged with wild rose and water birch.  It’s kicking my ass, but I’m having a great time.  We camp out all week and it’s fun to shock a good looking little pool and see what pops out.

 

The Fishing

 

Friday afternoon I drove the 300 miles back to Reno and hit the river early Saturday morning for a couple of hours.  Cold weather had stemmed the run off a bit and the river was a bit high, but clear and in great shape.  I hit up one of my favorite spots in East Reno where the flow was a little lower and was rewarded for my choice of spots.  I started off with a golden stone nymph and a Burk’s Hunchback March Brown nymph dropper, and was into fish right away.  The fish were absolutely hammering the MB nymph,  the first fish I hooked was a monster brown in the 8-10 lb range that broke off as I was attempting to land him.  My 5 wt is jacked up so I was fishing a my new 3 wt and this beast really put it to the test.  The rod help up but it was the leader that failed in the end.  Three other large trout also broke off or slipped the hook, but I managed to land a few nice ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday morning I fished a run just upstream from Saturday’s spot and caught a few more fish before I headed back to Elko.  Andy Burk’s great March Brown variation of his Hunchback nymph produced again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weekend I started to poke around some of the waters near Elko with some good success, I’ll write something up about it soon.  For now here’s a picture of a 21” rainbow I caught last Monday at the Ruby Marsh National Wildlife Preserve.