Reno Fly Shop

Reno Fly Shop is a full service fly shop at 238 South Arlington Avenue in downtown Reno, and the Truckee River is the water at its door. Its river page follows the flow through the Truckee Meadows past Reno and Sparks and on toward Pyramid Lake, as well as upstream into the town of Truckee, and treats the river as a rainbow and brown trout fishery. The seasonal notes are specific: spring is called the best window for one of the river’s fabled trophy fish, summer brings golden stones and crayfish along with caddis, pale morning duns, yellow sallies and midges, fall is the time for articulated streamers and aggressive browns, and winter narrows to blue winged olives and small black stoneflies. Guided trips are sold as half days or full days in walk and wade or float form, and the shop also guides Pyramid Lake, the East Walker and stillwaters in the Plumas National Forest. Rates are handled through the shop’s booking system rather than posted on the page. The East Fork Carson sits on the same Waters We Fish list and fishes nothing like the home tailwater. The shop treats it as a free-flowing, high-elevation watershed whose early season depends largely on flow: it typically runs high and coloured through the first couple of months of spring, when large stonefly patterns account for most of the grabs and worms, eggs and mops fill in. Summer is when it turns on, with golden stoneflies, pale morning duns, yellow sallies and caddis all in the river at once and dry-dropper and hopper-dropper rigs doing the work in the fast riffles. Autumn brings cooler water and aggressive fish, and streamers move more of them than any other method. The shop’s standing advice is to nymph in the morning and fish a dry in the afternoon, with European style nymphing named as the local favourite. Water upstream of Hangman’s Bridge on the California side is closed through the winter.