Show: The Fishing Show Station: KNCO File: 10:24.mp3 Air date: 2026-10-24 Source: OpenAI whisper-1 · shrunk from 98.9 MB to 12.4 MB --- transcript --- News Talk 830. The views and opinions of Denis Peirce do not represent those of ownership management and staff of Nevada County Broadcasting and KNCO. The KNCO Fishing and Outdoor Report with Denis Peirce is a service of Craig Johnson Plumbing. Honest, reliable, and fair. Find them online at craigjohnsonplumbing.com I bet you're going fishing all of the time, baby going fishing too. I bet your wife, your sweet wife will catch more fish than you. Many fish bites if you got good bait. Here's a little tip that I would like to relate. Many fish bites if you got good bait. I'm a going fishing, yes a going fishing, and my baby going fishing too. I went on down to my favorite fishing hole, baby grabbed me a pole and line. Threw my pole on and caught a nine pound catfish. Now you know I brought him home for supper. Time proven. Many fish bites if you got good bait. Here's a little tip that I would like to relate. Many fish bites if you got good bait. I'm a going fishing, yes a going fishing, and my baby going fishing too. We're live here on Friday evenings with the KNCO Fishing and Outdoor Report. We've got a good show this evening. John Rina, Rina Guide Service, you might know him. He's been on the show a number of times, but if you frequented mountain hardware and sports up in Truckee, John spent a lot of time up there working in the fishing department. You might know him from up there. He's going to be our in-studio guest for this evening. Before we get into that, I'd like to mention our sponsors, Drs. Jerry Chan and his daughter Dr. Tiffany Chan. They are the Chan Family Optometry Practice. They're located at 360 Sierra College Drive. If you're looking for quality family eye care, you cannot do any better than the Chan Family Optometry. Our second sponsor, as always, is TrollingFlies.com. It is the home of JFair, Trolling Flies, as well as Arctic Fox and a lot of other brands in there. It is the JFair time up at Eagle Lake. Most of the business for the website right now is all about Eagle Lake. There's people from Southern California down in San Diego County ordering flies because they're driving all the way up to Eagle Lake to go fish up there. I've been in touch with Val Aubrey. The average size of that fish has made a great bounce back from the depths of the drought. When the drought was full on here a couple of years ago, the reproduction of the Tui Chub minnows up there was very, very poor. If there aren't enough Tui Chub minnows, the trout just don't put the weight on. They've had more water the last few years, which has put more water into the two big basins in the north end where the Tui's do a lot of their spawning up in there. There's been tremendous numbers of Tui Chub minnows and the average weight of the fish in there has gone up. Typically it's about three and a half pounds, but once you get into the fall, October and maybe into November, some of the bigger ones, either some bigger ones start showing up or the three and a half pounders, a few of them really put some weight on. Anyways, it's Eagle Lake time and the hot fly up there has been the hot orange. Trollingflies.com, there's a button there for JFair Trolling Flies. Anyways, that's what's going on. That's the Eagle Lake report as well as the Trollingflies.com going on. A couple quick fishing reports. I spoke with Tom Page this afternoon. His plan when I talked to him a couple weeks ago was he was going to move from the Yuba over to the Feather. He hasn't done that and he hasn't fished the Feather at all because he said the Yuba has just gotten better and better. When he says things like that, I ask him, is this as good as it gets? He hesitated for a second and he said, yeah, it is. It is really good. The salmon return on the Yuba has been substandard. Let's just go there. But he said every day there's a few more of them coming in and there are salmon spawning from the Highway 20 bridge all the way down to Sycamore Ranch. Now, there's not lots of them like there have been in years past. But if you look, there's a spawning pair here and a spawning pair there and there are new ones coming in. The other question I ask him this time of the year is, are there bigger fish around that lead you to think that these are not locals, that these are recent immigrants to the Yuba River? And he said, yeah, in the recent past there have been bigger fish showing up that are not the regular old 14, 16, 17 inch fish that you find in the Yuba. They're bigger than that. So, it's looking like there's steelhead moving in, some more salmon coming in. Tom was saying that the egg bite is pretty good. It's not off the hook good, but it's good. And the higher up you are in the river, the better the egg bite is. But he said if you get down below the salmon between Sycamore Ranch and, say, Daguerre Dam, he said the fish down there are eating insect imitations, subsurface insect imitations really, really well. He and his guide clients are happy and so is he. But they're doing really well on the lower Yuba. I talked to Sean Rainsbarger. He's continuing to salmon fish. He is down at the Sac Metro area. And it's crowded down there. There's a lot of boat traffic, a lot of stuff going on. But there are a lot of fish down there. There are fish moving up the McColumby River. They sort of come out of the San Joaquin into the McColumby and go up. But the American River and the McColumby River are the two runs right now of salmon that have got new fish coming into them. And the Sac Metro below the mouth of the American. But he also was saying that any place that you can get bank access, there are guys down there throwing spinners from shore. You don't have to do a boat thing to get into the fishing down there. Although, I imagine the locals that have a short commute would be more likely to go down there. But there still are salmon to be caught. He said, though, that the quality of the flesh is tapering off a bit. He said he's caught fish in the recent past that looked really, really bright on the outside. But when he cut into them, their flesh wasn't as firm and red as other fish he had cut earlier in the season. So, things are changing there a little bit. And then talked to Mike Peace this afternoon. He's been up at Lake Davis. Water temperature down there has been 49 to 52. He was out the day that this storm front was coming in. And he said he had his best day this season at Lake Davis and caught 15 fish for his clients. He brought 15 fish to the boat. But the two really good ones were two brown trout, a 20-incher and a 22. He caught them fishing, suspending jig flies. You know, the flies that are tied on jig heads. In deep water, 20 to 25 feet and fishing a foot or two off the bottom. That's where he found his browns. Anyways, things are going. But point being, it's the time to go to Lake Davis. Water temperatures in the high 40s, low 50s. It's good up there. It'll be good all the way into the low 40s. But it's a great fishery. Why don't we take our first commercial break of the evening. And when we come back in studio with me this evening, we've got John Reno. We're going to be talking the Truckee River. Little Truckee River. The whole Truckee area up there is where he's been guiding a lot recently. We'll be back after a word from our sponsors. Life can feel complicated, but your finances don't have to be. At Ostro Financial Consultants, our CFP and CPA advisors are here to bring you clarity and peace of mind. For more than 40 years, families and individuals in our community have trusted us to guide them through life's most important financial decisions. 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And because we believe every piece should be as unique as the person who wears it, we still live by the words that have guided us from the beginning. We design what we make, and we make what we sell. Today, tradition continues with my son, Mark, and his wife, Denise, and master goldsmith, Chad, carrying forward the same commitment to creativity, craftsmanship, and personal service you've come to expect from Utopian Stone. We invite you to stop by our beautiful store at the corner of Pine and Broad Street in historic Nevada City and discover what's new. Utopian Stone. Designed with purpose, crafted with passion, and always made to last. Learn more at UtopianStone.com. This is Dennis Pierce. We're back with the KNCO Fishing and Outdoor Report. And in studio with me this evening is John Rina. A lot of people here might remember him from the fishing department up in Mountain Hardware and Sports up in Truckee. John, welcome back to the program. Hi, Dennis. Haven't had you here. You were busy all summer. I had a busy, busy summer. I was on the road quite a bit, and I'm back, and it's fall, and it's time to fish. I have a theory that what we really need to do is petition Congress to instead of having October be four weeks, make it eight weeks. That would be amazing. A lot of browns would get caught in that time period. It's just game on. During the break, you mentioned that you had info on Davis. What kind of a Davis report have you heard? I fished Davis a couple weeks ago. It was slow. We found some fish wind drifting by Mosquito Slough and stuff. Not really the banner day I was expecting. Then we went down to the dam, targeted some fish in 25 feet of water with Black Balance leeches and Daphnia, and had a great day. My buddy got about a four-pound brown, which was great to see out of Davis. I happened to see somebody I knew there, Ralph Cutter. I don't know if you remember Ralph Cutter. I do. He's been on the program. Ralph was there wind drifting in the middle of the lake, catching some fish, dragging around. He said there wasn't a ton of fish in the coves. We all talked that day and navigated back over towards the dam in deeper water. It seems like 20 feet of water was the ticket. We had a great lights-out day on chronomids on the top and a balance leech under it, black or orange, and the Denny Rickards Stillwater Nymph. Because Mike Peace was saying dark. Black was the color. He said really dark all over black. I'm like a rusty orange guy on Davis, but I converted as soon as my friends started out fishing me like five to one. They were actually eating orange Daphnia as well. Where in the water column? At the bottom? Were they suspended? The fish were hovering a couple feet above the bottom. I don't know if they were still picking up any chronomids that were suspended. Then about 22 feet of water in about 50 feet of water on the deepest part of the dam seemed to be where they were congregating. In front of the dam there must be a trench or something that spills out. They were kind of in that position for most of the middle of the day. Then in the evening we went back to the coves and did okay. We just didn't have a banner day. We went all the way back to Mosquito Slough and that area, Grizzly area. We caught fish in the evening, but not the numbers I expected. Mosquito Slough is all the way at the top of the lake. The opposite end of the dam. Opposite end of the dam. We burned some fuel, but we found the fish. It seemed like the dam end was the place to be. There were four or five boats hooked up over there. Everyone had a great day down by the dam. Now that's a couple weeks ago. What was the water temperature? Do you remember? The water temperature was hovering at about 57. High 50s. Yeah, it was still a little warm for my taste. I think that's why we had to kind of struggle a little bit. Then we had some friends go back last week. They said the water temperatures dropped like 7 degrees. The bite was kind of wide open. Everywhere they went they caught fish. I think the big weather change and the cool down has spurred the activity in Davis. I think the next couple weeks are going to be super hot. Shallow water, deep water, wherever you want to go. No, this is the season. Years ago, do you know the term, the brown baggers? Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with those boys. Yeah, one of them lives here in Grass Valley. One of the original guys. He was saying, yeah, if you want a brown trout in the fall, not summer or spring, but fall. He said the first two weeks in November. Is that the guy who works for NDOW as well? Is that the same guy? This is Brinkhurst. He was a retired firefighter. I met him in Truckee a number of years ago. He and his brother were a couple of the original members. His brother had the world record at one point. Brown trout came out of Flaming Gorge in Utah. It's brown trout season. They're very active. I've just seen a lot of fish get caught this week. With the weather change, that storm really spurred things on. You've been real busy guiding in the recent past. Yes. Where have you been? Flowing waters? Lakes? Where have you been? I grinded out a few days on the feather. I was a little too early. I caught some early fish in the feather about a month ago. The past couple weeks, I've been back to the feather in the low flow with great results. My friend fished it today. Got four or five fish up to six pounds. He said the egg bite was on. He said he did really well and no pressure. Right now, they're working on the boat ramp down there at the spillway. A lot of people aren't floating that section. They have to go all the way down to Vance Avenue to take the boats out. There's not a lot of float traffic in the low flow because the water is pretty low. I think it's 760. It seems like everyone's leaving the feather alone. If you're hot for an easy steelhead on a glow bug, I would definitely send you to the feather around the white gate area, like the middle low flow area, even closer down towards the after bay. Those first couple runs, we spooked about seven fish out of a tail. I saw a few fish pushing six, seven pounds. There's some big steelhead in the feather right now. Wow. Because conventional wisdom, the steelhead spawn at the hatchery up there starts in the last week in December and through the month of January. What I'm running into on the feather is a lot of fish. They're either unclipped, have an adipose. There's a lot of darker, maybe summer fish in there as well. We're catching some fish that are 16, 17 inches. I don't consider that a smolt in the feather. We're catching a lot of 20-inch, three-pound fish unclipped. Okay. I've only caught two clipped fish out of nine fish so far on the steelhead report card. A lot of fish with adipose. My friend sent me a video today of a nice three-pounder with adipose. The feather's pretty mysterious right now. I couldn't believe the amount of salmon fishing going down there in the after bay was incredible on Saturday. It was wall-to-wall people, 15 boats. It was absolute chaos taking the boats out at Vance. We were able to scoot around the back channel behind everyone so I wasn't getting cast out. Everybody had fish. People were having a great time. It was a big party down there. This was last Saturday. Sometimes people up there get ornery. It really seemed like everyone was getting along and catching fish. Wonderful. It wasn't quite the feather of old. Okay. I just can't believe how many boats, guides, and the recreational people pack into a little corner and try to drift through. That was amazing to watch the synchronicity of one boat hooking up, getting their fish, going around the circle, coming back. There was literally people in kayaks out there. It was really fun to watch. I'm glad to hear that. I'm real glad to hear that. Some salmon are on reds up top. There's not a ton of salmon reds right now. If I'm up top, you're talking low flow? Yeah, low flow below the 70 bridge. I only saw a few reds here and there. What's going on in the feather too is they're counting fish. There's a fish ladder and a weir kind of mid-low flow. There's a huge pot of maybe, if I was to guess, 500, 600 fish that haven't gone up yet. Right. Because Fishing Game is doing some biology and some stuff down there. I think a lot of the fish, once those gates are pulled a little more, will go up into the low, low flow from 70 bridge down and really get things kicked off in the next couple weeks. Okay. Good stuff happening. Yeah, that's the feather report for sure. Yeah, because what I've heard is the quantity of salmon returning to the feather was very good from an anecdotal point of view. They're still busting out 8,000 CFS into the high flow to Gredley. The water is cranking coming out of there right now. I mean, the high flow is really high. I mean, it's huge. I guess they're banking on or betting on the El Nino. Somebody up there knows something about why Lake Oroville should be really low coming into this winter. There's some data that we don't know about, but they are flushing that lake. I haven't seen how low it was, but the water was ripping coming out of there. Wow. Because at the same time, they're lowering Lake Almanor too. Are they? And Bucks and the high country stuff that stores. Yeah, they're putting that down into Oroville and going through. But yeah, good stuff happening. But my opinion, money is about water. They don't just flush that stuff to San Francisco Bay and say goodbye. Absolutely not. No, they don't. They sell it to somebody. Those are dollar signs going downstream somewhere. Yeah, and I think they're flooding rice fields as well. It could be this season. I have some friends who are religious duck hunters down here, and they said the same thing. The duck season is a little wonky because there's not a ton of water, but then when I drove through the patch the other day, there was a million birds everywhere. Okay. Yeah, I mean, Huncutt Road, there was five million birds flying at sunset. It was amazing. Yeah, that whole waterfall. And it was flooded. The water is in there. Yeah, because to a large extent, they're not allowed to burn off the fields anymore. They have to flood them and decompose the stuff rather than burn it off to prevent whatever from one season extending on to the next. Got it. Yeah. Anyways, other than the feather, where have you been recently? I've trolled bokeh quite a bit in the past couple weeks because we've hit the past two storm cycles at bokeh trolling and had success both times. It was not lights out fishing, but I will tell you the brown trout population in bokeh is very healthy. We're catching a lot of 14 to 16-inch fish, and then we're catching a few fish topping out at eight pounds. No lie on the scale. Eight-pound brown out of bokeh, we've caught four of them already, and they're gorgeous. And they've been – I thought I had it figured out that they were in the inlet kind of pre-spawn to go up. Right. A little trucky. Yep. But I've caught them at the dam. I've caught them in the coves. I've caught them down the middle of the lake. It's been a bite from eight feet of water to 30 feet of water. There's some big, huge macks coming out of bokeh, too. My friend caught a 16-pounder jigging in front of the dam the other day, and there's no pressure. No one is boat fishing it. Wow. Because I remember years ago when I assumed that the kokanee would be running up the little trucky river, going up there with egg patterns in a fly rod, and there's that little tiny dam there that's, what, a foot tall or whatever? Two or three, yeah. Yeah, it's a short little dam. And I was fishing below that, and boom, I thought I saw a fish, and the browns were jumping. To get over it? To get over it to travel further up. And I thought, that's not a rainbow. That was a brown trout. Yeah, so there are some browns in the middle meadow. The middle parking of that is above the camping area. We're talking a little trucky river. Right. Above the weir and above the campground is Boynton Mill. Right. In the middle meadow, there are some browns up there spawning, and they put the signs up to kind of protect the reds already because the browns somehow decided to spawn at some of the kokanee. So if you go to the upper little trucky right where Stampede dumps in, there's kokanee reds everywhere. The first five runs are just watered up with kokanee. They're doing their thing. They're digging. There's a pile of kokanee in the upper little trucky right below Stampede. How big are the kokanee there? Are they little guys? I would say if I was the guest mate, they're a little stunted, but they're not terrible. Twelve, thirteen inches was a good size one. Okay. I was up there two days ago. It was fun to watch. Because I remember a few years ago, Sean Raines Barger. Do you know Sean? I know Sean really well. Yeah. Okay. He was fishing Boca one year. I can't remember now because I went up and fished with him one day up there. I was curious because I haven't heard talk to anybody who's fished kokanee there in the last couple of years. You're saying that the kokanee population is decent? The kokanee population is decent and the average size is not depressing. There's hope. They're getting a great spawn. Okay. The kokanee this year at Stampede, they only topped out at 10, 11, 12 inches. There was definitely a really hot bite in the spring and people just got a little turned off by the size. But then I noticed a lot of people are starting to target the trout in Stampede. Right. You're talking during the warm weather months. During the warm weather months in the summer, people are definitely starting to figure out the trout fishing in Stampede. There's some really trophy cutthroat rainbows and there's still browns in there. But this was the summer I saw more guys fishing macs than I have in the past five years. So some guys are figuring out the mac fishing is pretty darn good in Stampede because no one was touching them for about five years. Because I remember I've done this program for 33 years and mac fishing was a big deal 20 years ago. I think it's getting a few more devoted souls because some guys are catching six, seven, eight pound macs now. So people are targeting them again. Do you remember the name Ted Samford? No. Okay. He was the guy, Ted's Bugs. He did the first kokanee bugs. Oh, those hard shell ones? Yeah. He was getting the t-shirt paint. Okay. And building them up on a hook. Okay. With multiple layers. You're talking like the John Minnis days of Mountain Hardware. There you go. Way back. That's those guys. I remember having them on the show and talking about jigging kokanee off the face of the dam at Stampede. Well, what happens in the fall is they pack up there first. There's two big pods of them before they go running up to Little Truckee. So when conditions are right, you can limit out on kokanee in front of the dam at Stampede quite effectively on nice chrome fish. And we're talking August? I would say if you were to think about that cycle, I would say end of August into September. It happens for about a month. A month. Okay. But it still is a thing to vertically jig them. Absolutely. All right. We are up against our second commercial break of the evening. Our guest this evening, John Reno. You might remember him from Mountain Hardware up at Truckee. But he's full-time guiding these days. And spending some time in western Nevada County. And some time over in the Truckee. And probably you see him driving back and forth. We're going to be back after a word from our sponsors. Remember when you went to a restaurant and you were treated with respect? Remember when you could invite your friends to a restaurant and you were not disappointed? Remember when you could count on your restaurant providing consistent quality of food and service? And remember when there were not hidden charges on your bill? Remember for a moment the way it used to be. It still is at Serino's at Main Street in Grass Valley. Wow. Yeah, it's a weird configuration. I thought they'd be like up in the... This is Dennis Pierce, host of the KNCO Fishing and Outdoor Report. Drs. Jerry Chan and his daughter, Dr. Tiffany Chan, have been taking care of my family's vision needs for over 35 years. Is your vision not quite as sharp as it used to be? You may need a new eyeglass prescription or you could have a more serious eye condition. 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To learn more about my experience and priorities, search Bob for Grass Valley City Council online. Paid for by Branstrom for Grass Valley City Council 2026, FPPC number 1488394. Save more at Grass Valley Provisions with their loyalty program. Sign up in-store and get 20% off your first purchase, plus a one-cent pre-roll welcome gift. Earn points with every visit and unlock more rewards as you move through the loyalty tiers. You must be 21 or older with a valid ID. Shop GBProvisions.com or visit 403 Idaho-Maryland Road. Open daily 9 to 9. Grass Valley Provisions, lift up your day the Grass Valley way. This is Dennis Parish, we're live back with the Kansas C.O. Fishing and Outdoor Report in studio with me this evening is John Reno. He's very active on social media, Facebook, Instagram, that sort of stuff. But if you use phonics to try to find the man's name, he's not there. He is R-double-I-R-double-I-R-double-I-R-double-I-R-double-I-R-double-I-R-double-I-R. He is R-double-I-N-A. Thanks Dennis. Hey man, I'm trying to help you out here. My advertising budget is pretty small. We try to take care of you here at KNCO. I appreciate that. He does a lot of cool stuff out there and you need to follow him if nothing else. But R-double-I-N-A is how you find him on social media. We have evolved into a topic of brown trout fishing here. We really have. It's on everybody's mind, I think. Maybe not, maybe not. Just a few of the more discerning people. We've talked about Boca, we've talked about Lake Davis. Stampede, let's get into Stampede a bit. Stampede has been really complex. I go up to Stampede on these storm days and I feel like I'm going to have a great bite. I've been working my butt off for the fish, but they're really quality fish. We're catching two to three pound rainbows in the coves on Calabasas fly fishing. It's still a Calabasas bite. Any Calabasas nymph that you love, they will eat. And they're still eating Daphnia, which they've been doing that all summer. But the biggest, hardest thing about Stampede for me right now is the mack bite. I'll go into a spot, 160 feet of water, mark them on the graft. Drop my Rapala ice jig down there, catch three or four. Go back the next day, cannot find one. I don't know if they're moving around. My theory is they're kind of thinking about spawning and maybe they're in really shallow water on the shelves, 20 feet of water. I look for the macks near the dam on the shelves because that seems the way they spawn. And I'm catching smallmouth bass on the jigs. So the macks are a little bit of a mystery to me in Stampede. They were great all summer. They were deep. They stayed down. I fished them just like I fished Donner, just troll deep or jig. But most of the kokanee are already up in the little truckie and spawning actively. So I think when the kokanee leave, the macks maybe go more in the shallow water to prey on the crayfish and the baitfish and kind of leave the schools of kokanee behind. That's my theory. Water temp at Stampede. Water temp at Stampede right now is 54. 54, okay. It's not super cold, but it really went from like 65, 66 to cool down in two weeks. It definitely cooled down fast. Middle 60s to middle 50s in two weeks. In two weeks. That's a pretty quick cool down. What are overnight temps at Truckee? 30 degrees. Okay, so it's below freezing. Yeah, so I went with, and Val from Eagle told me this a long time ago. She said, you know, when that surface water cools off and they feel that, they go up in four or five feet of water. And that's where I've been catching the nice trout. So with that cold surface temp and the overnight lows, the big trout are sticking to five to 15 feet of water. And that's the coldest water right now because of the heat loss during the day and the cool down at night. So I've been catching a lot of nice trout in 10 feet of water in the Davies Creek arm. Okay, now, so what you're recommending is get below the top layer, get to the 10-foot, 15-foot depth layer. Absolutely. If you're going to, you know, run plugs or spoons or something for trout or a worm and a dodger, shallow up way more than you think. Okay, rather than long line trolling on the top. Yep. I like 10 feet of water. Just set it to 10 and, you know, just cruise around. You're going to get some good bites. And there's a few cutthroat in there, just my opinion, pushing eight or nine pounds. I've seen two already in the past three weeks. And I'm talking on the scale, taking home, putting it in the smoker, eight-pound cutthroat out of stampede is you think you have a huge brown trout on there and it ends up being a nice cutthroat. I think it's a Heenan Lake strain if I was to identify it. But do they pull hard? They pull super hard. Okay, because I'm sort of disappointed by the Pyramid Lake. Those are the only cutthroat I've liked to catch as stampede. I've caught Heenan. I've caught Pyramid. I've caught them kind of all over the west. But for some reason in stampede, every time I think I have a big brown, I get the net out. It's a six-, seven-, eight-pound cutthroat. And is that typically a fall proposition or have you gotten them through the warm weather months? I've gotten them through the warm weather months. The problem with the cutthroat is they like to go deep with the max in the summer, so you have to kind of weed through the max to catch cutthroat. I think they hang out together down deep with the schools of bait. Okay. But you can catch cutthroat in there year-round. Spring after ice-out is the best time to actually, like, target them, target them because they go into the inlets in the spring. For spawning? For spawning. Okay, because I remember when they had a cutthroat population at Martis, they would run up the creek that goes under Highway 167, is it? That's Highway 89. Oh, 267, sorry. 267. I can't, those numbers always confuse me. There's a lot of them. But you could go park along the highway there. This is back in 78, and walk up that creek a little bit, and there's fish in there the size of salmon. I mean, they're huge in this tiny little creek. Yeah, they had that stocking program there for a while. Yeah. But so now, if you wanted to catch a cutthroat, you would recommend Stampede or Prosser? Prosser is a great, fun, smaller lake, very straightforward. It's only about 60 feet deep at the deepest point, easy to navigate. I just troll shoreline there going, you know, relatively fast, like 2.2, 2.3, and those cutthroat, they're pretty prevalent in Prosser, and they've gotten bigger. This time of the year? This time of year, and there's fish in there up to 20, 21 inches. There's probably bigger ones. I just don't run into too many big, big ones. Okay. But what about the food chain at Prosser? Is it the equal of the food chain in Stampede? No. It's like, to put it in perspective, if you're going to Whole Foods, you're going to Stampede. If you're going to the grocery outlet kind of bargain basement, that's what's in Prosser. There's just tons of kokanee in Stampede. They've been feeding the fish for 10 years. Prosser has no kokanee, has a smallmouth bass population, and the main thing in Prosser is the two-each-up. Okay. And they draw Prosser down pretty low. So the food source in Prosser is not quite there to hold the state record cutthroat, but I think there's some secrets in Prosser that people have talked about. A couple of the guys have hooked big fish that break them off on 15 pounds. They don't know what they are. Wow. So I've heard rumor in the past few years of a couple, like Pat's Guide Service. He hooked some huge fish, and they fought it for a while, and it broke off. They never saw it. I've had the same thing happen to me. So there's something going on in the food chain in Prosser. I think there's still a few browns in there. I know they tried to eradicate them, but there's some kind of big trout in Prosser that no one's really kind of brought to light yet. It's kind of the Loch Ness Monster. It's my opinion that once browns get established somewhere, you cannot eradicate them. There's going to be two, a boy and a girl, that escape the whatever. I caught one off the dam three years ago, so I know there's a population there, and it was like 16-inch healthy fish. I feel like brown trout are the most resilient of all those trout. They can live in a canal. They can live in a pond. They can live wherever they need to live. They'll find a way. Yeah, they're tough. They're tough fish. They're tough. The browns in Stampede, if you were to go there tomorrow, would you be working the edges all around the lake? If I was looking for browns in Stampede, I would go to the Sage Hen entrance and the Little Truckee entrance, kind of off the ledges, because I know, and I've seen them on the graph, they're kind of potted up in schools looking for some water to go upstream, and there isn't any right now, so they're stalled out in the lake. I think some of those browns will probably spawn in the lake, too, because the gravel's really clean in the Little Truckee inlet in the lake. Okay. So if I was looking for browns, I would look for browns in the entrance of those two coves, about 45 to 20 feet of water. Okay, because I remember back in 78, 80, a neighbor of mine caught a heck of a brown, and he caught it out of Sage Hen Creek. Okay. And I went, okay, that fish was in Sage Hen Creek to take care of biz. Yeah, to make more babies. I would also say the back of the island on the other side of the boat ramp is a great place to troll for those browns, too. They like the backside of that island. There's a couple windy points they like to hang out off there. Okay. So it's the north end of the island. I had another question vis-à-vis deep water jigging on Stampede Reservoir. You were saying 160. Is that the max depth currently? The way the drawdown is, that's give or take 150, 160. And we just look at those marks. There's three holes near the dam that we target, and we just read the screen and jig them up. Okay. So it's all about just looking for those bigger marks and finding those fish sitting on the bottom, and that's typically a Mac. Because years ago before Keith Kerrigan retired, I remember having him on the show, and when he was fishing kokanee under heavily pressured situation, like in tournaments and just weekend days, he said one of his secrets was to troll. You know, he's trolling the, what, 35, 45, 50, you know, the standard depths for kokanee. But he said he would troll over type of the original creek channel, original river channel, and he would do that, and he would run into a lot of fish that would suspend over that really deep water. Comments on that? Is that a pattern you've seen? That's a pattern I've seen more so in the way into Davies Creek Arm and up Davies Creek Arm about halfway. This seems like the kokanee, for some reason, like the suspended Davies Creek Arm, like 45, 50 feet of water where it's like 100 feet deep. All right. And I don't know why they do that. Maybe that's where the phytoplankton or whatever they feed on is hanging out in there. But if you're going to do that, I would definitely, here again, kind of in the same vein of looking for browns, go entrance to Davies Creek Arm, entrance to Little Truckee. The kokanee really pack up on the way up to Little Truckee and stay there for a long time and kind of trickle in as needed from now until maybe two or three more weeks. They came in hot and heavy because they turned the water up out of Independence to bring them in for Project Kokanee, and a lot of fish went up with that push, but there's still a lot of kokanee in the lake. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. The wild thing about stampede is the kokanee, next year's kokanee, you know, the six, seven inchers are in giant schools on the surface feeding, and those big trout know that right now. So if you go to a stampede in the evening, you'll see what's almost like a bait ball on the surface and almost like a striper bite. Something's pushing them up, and that's where that top lining for, you know, trophy trout in the evening has been really good. Okay. Those kokanees seem to come out of the depths and kind of hang in there in the evening hours. Okay. Right on the surface. It's 45 minutes after the hour. It's time for our third commercial break. This is Dennis Pierce with the KNCO Fishing and Outdoor Report. John Reno, R-I-I-N-A, is my guest here this evening, and we're going to be back after a word from our sponsors. ♪♪♪ If you've opened your insurance renewal lately and thought, how can anyone afford this? You're not alone. Across California, homeowners and businesses are facing skyrocketing premiums, reduced coverage, and in some cases, cancellations altogether. But there's hope. Rockrow's Risk is changing the way wildfire insurance works. They specialize in helping property owners in wildfire-prone areas lower risk and lower insurance costs by recognizing the wildfire mitigation work you've already done or helping you create a smarter protection plan moving forward. Their clients save an average of 21% to 35% on premiums while creating safer, more resilient properties. From residential homes to commercial properties, Rockrow's Risk combines insurance expertise with innovative wildfire risk assessment to help protect what matters most. Don't assume you're out of options. 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They've gone out there, they camp, they float tube, they've done kind of all the Jackson Meadows stuff that you can do, and it's been really slow, but I think what happened was these guys were targeting the fish in too deep of water, and I think a lot of the fish were in the coves, so past creek and up there, I think that would be the spot to go, but people have been fishing it. I haven't heard a great report from it yet, and guys are pretty hardcore for those browns. I haven't caught too many of them. Because Sean gave me a report early in the year, way early in the year, that a fish planting truck drove up there, and the barricades kept them so far from the water that they didn't want to carry all these fish all the way down to the water that they turned around and they dumped the fish in Donner Lake instead. They did the same thing in Boca as well. They stuck some 8-inch cutthroat in Boca not too long ago for the same reason. Okay. So, yeah, I haven't heard a great report out of Jackson. I'm sure on the right day, on a storm, you could probably target some big trout, but I haven't heard anybody being too successful. I think if you go get your boat banded for just Jackson, you can put it in and out. Right. But you have to specifically leave it for that lake, and not a lot of people are willing to do that. You need a boat for every lake. You do need a boat for every lake. Tell your wife that we need a boat for every lake. Or you need to know somebody who's kind of in the pedal kayak industry and sell everyone a pedal kayak so they can get trolling with the pedal kayak. Yeah, yeah. Now, I've lost count so far of the times you say when the storm came in. It's all about the bad weather, I'm telling you. All right. That's what I want to get a little deeper into. Buy a good rain jacket. Okay. I mean, Mike Peace was up at Lake Davis, and as the storm was coming in, he had his best day up there this fall. Pressure change, make some bites. Same thing with pyramids. Sometimes it works against you because of the lightning and the thunder. You've got to be careful with the boat, but I've never, ever seen fish go from asleep to awake more than I've seen them on a nice, big, fat storm. Okay. I mean, it just wakes them up. The knock in my mind right now is if the storm comes in, you've got to drive over Donner Pass to come home to this side of the hill. Correct. Or you sleep in your car. I've slept in my car a little bit this week. I know the program. Okay. But an incoming storm front. Now, we're not just talking browns, but we're talking the trout world. I think the trout world in the rivers and the streams as well. It spurs the bugs to hatch. It spurs the fish to eat. They get a sense of urgency. A little truckie two days ago in that storm, aside from the lightning strikes and the hail, every fish in the river was rising. There was a giant bluing olive hatch. There was no anglers because the weather was horrible. But every place I went in that three miles of stream, there was a rising fish to a bug. That place is the greatest place on earth when that happens. It only happens a few times a year. Okay. And the fish population in there is good. Fish population is great in there. Down lower river, I've been noticing because of one large predator that's decided to take up residence there, the fish population in the lower river is getting a little weird because there's about a four-foot otter that decided to live in the lower little truckie right now in Bat Cave. I saw him three days ago, and he's been eating the coconut. He's been eating the trout because there's scat everywhere. And this guy has kind of taken over that domain, which that's the first time I've seen one take up residence in the little truckie. Because a buddy of mine is Stanislaus River, West Slope, down by Angel's Camp and Sonora down there, and he said there's packs of them, like a family of two, three, four, five of them. Well, I started to see them. Will come into a creek and just work it. Yeah, I seen them. We first noticed them, and they lived in the Stampede Dam for a long time. There was crawdad shells. They were kind of predatory on the kokanee and some of the small trout. And then we noticed they're in the truckie in Glenshire. Then we noticed this year they're in the little truckie. So they're definitely migratory per food. Okay. Because it's illegal to send them off to their happy hunting ground, isn't it? I believe they're protected. Yes. Yeah. They love to repopulate too. I've seen some baby otters that are really cute, but I can tell the otters are getting after it. So that's a whole other show probably. Yes, it is. We'll let that go. We might say something ill-advised on the air. We don't want to do that. No. Okay. Webber Lake. Did you fish Webber? I fished Webber a couple times in the spring. Caught a lot of, like, decently small cutthroat, but also found some bigger marks in deeper water, more towards where the inlet or the fake inlet comes in, and did okay in Webber. Like, Webber's got some nice fish in there. They're still browns. They're still rainbows. They're still brookies. They're all still in there. The problem is they stock it with so many cutthroat, it's hard to cut through the cutthroat because it's a great fishery. It's super fun. You're catching 8 to 15-inch cutthroat on the surface on midges all day. Evening is incredible. I just don't see, when you have that many fish in a lake, the size being able to kind of move the mark forward to the 20-inch range because I don't know how many fish a lake that size can support. It's not the biggest lake in the world. It's pretty small, really. Yeah, pretty small, and it gets choked out by weeds, so there's only a few deep spots. When it gets too hot, I'm sure all those fish just kind of hug the thermocline in the 45- to 50-foot-deep section. That's only one little tiny part of the lake. Right. But it's really good fun. It's really good fun. This time of year, if you go in the fall with a float tube, I don't know if the gate's closed or not yet, but you can have some great fall fishing in there as well. I just don't know how long the access is going to stick as far as getting a boat in there. I think the gate might be closed already, so you'd have to walk in and float tube it. Where is Weber Lake? Some people don't know. Weber Lake is on the way to Jackson Meadows Reservoir off Highway 89. You go past the Independence Turnoff, and you go maybe a mile and a half, and Weber Lake is on the left. Gotcha. Did you fish Independence this year? I fished Independence a little bit in the spring. I was part of the tagging program for the Nature Conservancy. Independence is doing great. They're getting fish. Average fish in Indy is like 16, 17, 18, 19 inches now. We tagged fish up to 28 inches. Independence is a great lake, and there's still kokanee in there as well. Those guys definitely want you to take the kokanee home. If you're a hardcore kokanee fishing, it's nice to do a half-day kokanee, half-day trout day. You can keep some fish in Independence. It has to be kokanee. You can't keep the trout. It's catch or release on the trout. Okay, but the fishery is healthy. The fishery is healthy, and it's barbless artificial only. Right. Access is restricted. They have cut it down fewer and fewer and fewer days as time keeps going along. Their season is specifically designed to protect the cutthroat spawn in the spring and also just let them shut down camp in the fall. Those guys come from Florida. The managers are from Florida. I know him. By October 25th, he's back in Florida. They cut that one off a little earlier than I would like. Because that used to be a great wintertime fishery. It used to be year-round. Yes, it did, but things have changed. Times are different. Yes, they are, and sometimes I wonder. We are up against the end of our program here. You are real active on Facebook and Instagram, correct? Correct. Any other places? No. It's John A. Rina on Instagram, and it's Rina Guide Service. I do have a nice website. I don't use it much, but I do take a look at the website. It's Rina Guide Service at Vercelli.app. My kid made the website. Definitely on Instagram every day and a bit on Facebook. If you just look up John A. Rina and Rina Guide Service, it will come up on Instagram. It's R-double-I-N-A. R-two-I-N-A. We've got a minute left here. Where are you going to fish in the next couple of weeks? Truckee River has been great. I love the Glenshire stretch right now for dry fly. I like the canyon. I go play fish on the Nevada side where there's not road construction or stream construction. Nevada side has been great on the truckee as of two days ago and today. I fished it today. It was amazing. Better than the California side? Different fish. Bigger, consistent fish. Fish on the California side average 14, 16 inches. You can catch quite a few 20-inch fish on the Nevada side right now. What about up high between Truckee and Tahoe City? Definitely a sleeper population of browns and rainbows that not a lot of people fish. That does change regulation-wise November 15th to catch or release no bait, but it is open year-round. It's a great winter fishery. Winter fishery? Yep. Alright. Well, John, I do appreciate you coming all the way down and coming in here this evening. It's always great talking to you. Anytime, Dennis. Love it. I look forward to having you coming back, but I don't want you driving from Truckee all the way over there. Today was a special day. I had to guide today. I had a client come up from Arizona, so I did have to bust out the road trip. Alright. John Rina, R-I-I-N-A. Thanks for being with us. Look forward to having you come back again. This is Dennis Pearce, KNCO Fishing and Outdoor Report. We'll be back here next Friday evening. Hey, Jim, are you there? Okay. For MPG, it's time for the Car Show in six minutes on KNCO Grass Valley, Nevada City, 106.9 FM and 830 AM. It's 6 o'clock. --- end of transcript ---