Temperature of trout streams

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Try to have a thermometer and take the temperature on the streams you fish and report that too.

[WinterrunRon]

Fished the Truckee hard on Sunday for 5 hours with a friend. Nothing, not a fish, not a rise, not a take for either of us... nothing. But we did spot a 25"-30" brown holding still in deep water next to a steep bank! Couldn't get him to take our offerings. Headed to the Little T for and hour and a half in the evening before heading home, one take on a dry, missed it, my friend landed two small rainbows. Water is 45 degrees! Both rivers are high with lots of places for the fish to spread out and COLD! Ron

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

It need to be in the mid-50s for that river to start fishing well.

They must still have a lot of snow up there.

Usually the 4th of July is very good.

[J.R. Hubbard]

I fished the N. Fork of the Yuba over the 4th and it was about 52 in the morning and would come up to 57-58 by the evening hatch. Morning fished well, but the evening was killer!

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Thanks JR

My friend Bob Giannoni is up at Packer Lake this week. He fished the NF of the Yuba in the morning on Sunday or Monday and said it was good and in perfect condition too.

What flies are you using?

[J.R. Hubbard]

There are a lot of stone fly's up there. In early part on June I was throwing #4 stone fly's and now it's little yellow sally's. I really only fish dries up there.
EC Caddis is a staple up there for me.

The fishing has been incredible up there this year.

[bigtj]

Hmmmm..my expereince is that water temps don't affect the little t fish that much the fish are used to cold water coming out of Stampede. Tailwater fish tend to get used to cold temps, the San Juan is a good example of this. I did very well early season when the water was in the high 30's and there was little pressure on the river and the Truckee was really slow and high. I think the main reason why people are having a tought time on the Little T at this time is the pressure. The fish are getting hammered and are hunkering down during the day. Later in the season, temps do go up a bit, but the pressure also goes down, which gets the fish back on the feed again. Skilled anglers are still catching fish early and late right now.

Water temperature is also very relative and changes during the day. In some instances, the delta in water temps can be 5-10 degrees just from diurnal differences, and even more at the same time of the day as a result of seeps, hot springs, and irrigation. To take a single point measurement doesn't tell the whole tale. If you just take one temp you won't get the full story.

To see what I'm talking about, go to the california data exchange center and look at temperature data for the Lower McCloud stationid=MSS. You'll be amazed by the diurnal swings during hot weather, and how they dampen during cold weather, and that the lag generally means coldest water temps mid-day and warmest water temps during the evenings. I think it's interesting how collecting data always seems to show you something you didn't know intuitively.

[PatrickM]

Hey Bigtj,
This may be getting off the point of this thread, but I was up on the little T for a couple of days at the end of June (right when they started dumping all that water out of Tahoe) and I hardly saw any bug activity at all. There were a few mayflies buzzing around, but I didn't see one fish rise the entire time I was there. Also, even when I turned over rocks it seemed like there were hardly any bugs. There was a good amount of rock snot, though. It seemed like I was constantly cleaning that junk off my flies. Has that gotten worse this year, or is it just me?

[bigtj]

PM,

First of all, the bug population is insane right now. I just think you were looking in places that had been recently inundated with higher water. Find some woody debris in deeper water and you will be amazed. The caddis and sally hatches right now are intense as I've ever seen. Just clouds of them. So don't worry about the bugs.

I also read your e-mails on lack of bug activity and the thing is that the fish on the Truckee and Little T spend most of their time eating caddis sub-surface, or big chunks of meat (another topic entirely so I'll leave it alone here). A lot of times when it looks like the fish are eating bugs on the surface they are actually taking pupa in the film. My expereince is that Truckee fish only really get up on top heavily for a few hatches - green drakes, tricos, and paraleptos. They also get up on top much more regularly at the end of a caddis hatch to eat cripples. Heavy surface feeding almost never happens during the day, except for the trico spinner fall or when the duns come off in the afternoon. There are occasional exceptions, of course, and fish do take hoppers and other big bugs during the day, but it's not as consistent as the caddis deal. And many times, either it only "happens" for 15 or 30 minutes, or it doesn't happen at all. There are exceptions, especially during green drake time, but the true steady-feeding rising to dry flies is a really transient event on both the Truckee and Little Truckee. Bottom line - you will catch a lot more fish on the Truckee concentrating on all the stages of caddis than trying to use mayfly dries to rising fish. Ralph Cutter spilled the beans with his writing on fishing birds nests, master that and you will absolutely hose the fish on the Truckee at times. I will say though if you're thing is catching trout on top, there are better rivers than the Truckee for that.

To me the Truckee is supremely challenging but the rewards are really great, the fish are fantastic. I don't think I would like it as much if the fish were free rising all the time. Those special nights when the fish are up like crazy come along a dozen or two times a year and when they do it's epic.

Good luck to you,

-John

[J.R.]

I was thinking of fishing the Truckee within the next few weeks and I've got some green drakes, hoppers, adams, buggers, etc. but don't have much in my caddis section. What caddis patterns do you recommend. And what type of insect is the paraleptophlebia, heard the name before, but never found out what it was.

John

[Matt Frey]

Birds Nests in black and olive seem to work for me up there. This last weekend I got a lot of hits on a size 16 olive birds nest but I was only able to land 2. Good luck!

[bigtj]

These are all good patterns:

lafontaine's deep pupa, beadhead, olive #14, cinnamon #16.

lafontaine's emergent pupa, grey deer hair wing, olive #14, cinnamon #16

Bird's nest, tan, olive, and cinnamon, #12, #14, #16.

Fox's poopah, #14-#16, olive and cinnamon

Cutter's E/C caddis #12, #14, #16, olive/brown, cinnamon/brown

[PatrickM]

Thanks for the info, John. Good stuff. :D

[Ed Wahl]

Here's some obsvervations from my experiences on small mid elevation streams. You start out in the morning, wading wet as always, first thing on your mind when you hit the water is, man that's cold. Fishing kind of slow. Fish til noonish, take a break, hit it again. This time when you get your feet wet you think, ooh that's nice, and the fishing is really hot. Fish 'til evening, take a dinner break and hit it again. It's back to man that's cold, and slower fishing. I've never carried a thermometer but the temp change is enough to notice on your legs. Of course that's early season, later on when water and air temps are higher the fishing slacks off a bit mid afternoon then goes berserk right at last light. Hey, if it was easy it would be called catching, not fishing. :D

[J.R. Hubbard]

Very well said....