Lake Davis & Frenchman Lake Fly Fishing Report

Jon Baiocchi reports on 3.24.19

Lake Davis & Frenchman Lake: 

Currently, Lake Davis is at 83% of capacity, and Frenchman Lake is at 84% of capacity. I don’t like when Lake Davis is really full, there are fewer coves and the fish are scattered and harder to find. Also, the weed beds from the season before are much deeper. I do like Frenchman when it is high as the north end of the lake is more productive, and it spreads out other water recreationist throughout the lake so they do not tend to interfere with us fly anglers. On the 1^st of March I had a short meeting on the phone with the head fisheries biologist for Plumas and Sierra counties about Lake Davis and Frenchman Lake. The first question raised was do fly anglers want Brown trout in LD, I said very much so and that it may bring back fly anglers to the lake. As you know many fly anglers gravitate to the Truckee and Little Truckee rivers to quench their appetite for browns. We agreed the Browns could put a dent into the out of control bass population as well. This plant could very well happen if everything falls into place. LD will be receiving 40,000 catchable Eagle Lakers, and 40,000 sub catchable Eagle Lakers for 2019. When those plants will happen is unknown at this time.

Frenchman Lake will receive 150,000 sub catchable Eagle Lakers for 2019. The reason the lakes have not been planted in the last few years is due to a change in planting schedules. These schedules have a starting month and an ending month within the calendar year. There was a delay in implementing the new schedule which led to no overlap of the schedules, thus impending a dry period. This was not caught until late July of 2018 which led them to plant 20,000 pounds of catchable rainbows in August at LD. We should see better results in the following years, especially year 3. Now if they could change the regs from a 5 fish limit to 2, and 4 in possession instead of 10, I’d be really happy. The future looks bright!