I flew to California to spend some time with my son for the Thanksgiving Holiday. We plan to fish the wild trout sections of the Truckee River and the East Carson River on this trip. Our base of operations is South Lake Tahoe so that means we will need to travel through a number of mountain passes to get to our fishing destinations each day. Unfortunately, on day one we ended up with only two hours of fishing because of projected snow storms in higher elevations.. in other words the mountain passes. The reports called for up to 15 inches of snow in some cases.

First things first… we hit a local mom and pop breakfast spot “Ernie’s” in South Lake Tahoe before making the hour long drive north to the Truckee. Great food and great conversation catching up with my son. Coffee is an integral part of my early morning fishing maneuvers. Some thick cut hickory smoked bacon doesn’t hurt either!

In an hour we arrived at the river. We used our google map app to find an access point to the wild trout fly fishing only section of the Truckee River just below the incredible old western town of Truckee… more about the town later. Our hopes where high as we rigged out fly rods and joked about all the trout we would be hauling in today.

We worked hard fishing various nymph patterns. In the fast boulder strewn runs we Euro Nymphed and in the slower deeper sections we used suspension rigs. The local fly anglers suggested small midge patterns in size 20. I have to laugh when I hear this recommendation from folks in winter because it seems to be the universal “go to”. We did throw small midges for a while but after making some solid presentations to really good looking water with no joy we started experimenting. I think I tore through about every nymph pattern in my box!

The day started sunny but about an hour into fishing we noticed a significant drop in air temperatures and we could see snow in the high mountains. The mountains we would need to travel through to get back to South Lake Tahoe. A quick scan of my weather app and and a check of road conditions of the two mountain passes we had to travel through put us on alert. We decided to play it safe and put in one more hour then head back to the hotel. A good call because we made it back just ahead of the storm. There’s always tomorrow. The sting of a fishless day, no matter how short, made for a bit of a quite ride home as we replayed the day and what “could have been”.