It's been a while since I made it up to the river. Since the flows blew out all my well mapped hidey holes-I have been looking at other sites to fish. Just got back from a four day WTF flyfishing jag in Reno, NV.
Got absolutely "schooled" on the Truckee river, the flows are up and down depending on the weather. We did nail a nice 24' downtown brown, and a few Putah sized 'bows. Fishing in driving sleet when it's 36 degrees out is fun...for a day. The crazy weather went from that to the low 80's in the next two days!
The main event was strange fishing on step ladders for monster Cutthroats in Pyramid lake. I say strange because standing on a step ladder in a balls freezing lake is not my idea of any fun...that is until the first lake trout takes your size 18 midge and runs you to your backing in three blistering shakes and you cannot do anything about it because if you step off the damn ladder you're now in balls freezing-chest deep water.
Needless to say it was fun, my best hog (4-5lb) was taken on a float tube just off shore and took 40 minutes to wrangle in. My fault for tying on a size 20 midge, and using 5x tippet. Living very dangerously indeed!
To bring this back to Putah Creek, I hear tell the flows are coming back down and the risers are after BWO's on the surface.
Pyramid lake fishing is a nice diversion, but in the end nothing beats a day on good 'ol Putah, home to some of the meanest, hardest fighting fish I have met within a 4 hour drive of the Bay Area.
