We look at quite a few factors when forecasting fishing conditions for the week. Flows, water temps, time of year, cloud cover, wind, smoke and water clarity are just a few of the environmental factors that can drastically change how your day of fishing goes. Out of the many variables that we factor in to our report and forecast, we really keep a close eye on two: Flows and water temperature. While flows are subjected to the body of water and the section you’re looking at, the key is looking at the calculated median flows and how much they’ve gone up or down over the last week. 

Day in and day out, we ideally like to see stable flows as this means that the fish aren’t looking to move much and can sit in their feeding lane and engulf whatever food comes by. But a change in flows isn’t always bad. This is especially true when they either come up a bit, or spike and are beginning to drop. When a major spike happens this often rings the dinner bell for the trout looking for larger meals dislodged by a surge of water. Drops in flows are typically best after extended high water events, like we saw last summer. When the flows drop near their median annual range, we know that the fish will begin to feed a bit more normally and we can target the typical high probability areas. Regarding water temps, much like humans, trout have an ideal temperature range where they are at their happiest and feeding most aggressively. We have seen colder weather as of late leading to a drop in water temperatures. This is certainly a welcome sight for all of us. 

In the canyon from Hirschdale to Verdi, we are seeing water temps peak at 65 degrees at 5:00 pm. This means you can safely fish all day down here right now. As flows also remain very stable in this area, we think this is the place to be right now. August is the single best month to fish crawdads on this river, and recent reports confirm the fish are keying in on these high protein meals. They are typically best fished dead drifted, either under a bobber or using tightline tactics. As we head into the later months of summer, we are downsizing our mayfly imitations a bit and opting for sizes 16-18 in patterns such as Infernogons, Czech bombs, picky fish perdigons or the classic rainbow warrior. The other large bug of note is the lesser-known noctournal stonefly. These are around a size 4-6 and provide another great option for your attractor of the crawdads aren’t getting it done. If indicator fishing, then a size 6 Pat’s rubberlegs, an epoxy stone or a two bit stone around the same size have been getting it done. If tight-lining or “euro-nymphing”, give my brown Rocksteady stone a try in a size 4. This fly is very heavy and will help punch through some faster water and get down to the fish quickly.

The Glenshire stretch of the river has seen very stable flows over the last few weeks, hanging at around 300 today. This is great for this time of year and as both Tahoe and Donner remain near capacity, the flows up here should continue to be great through fall this year. While water temps are still an issue in the late afternoon above the Boca confluence, we can fish a bit later in the day around Glenshire right now. This week, we’ve been seeing temps hit 68 by around 2:00-3:00 pm. Please continue to bring your thermometers with you if fishing upstream of Boca.