Wednesday and Thursday were very different days. Wednesday was cold, stormy and windy, while Thursday was warm, sunny and calm. So, we fished according to the conditions…Olive streamers and small mayfly nymphs on Wednesday and hoppers, moths, ants and caddis on Thursday. The temperature Wednesday morning was below 40, the skies were dark gray and the fish were aggressive.
Olive streamers with a small sz.18 or 20 mayfly dropper (Shop Vac, Hogan’s Red Headed Step Child, B.H. Tungsten P.T. Flash Bug, Amber Studly Nymph, etc…) tight lined with occasional strips, during the storms brought a lot of nice fish to the boat. We were fishing an 8 ft. leader with a sz. b split and would throw just slightly upstream, give two big mends to let the line sink and then bring the line tight and slowly strip in. We fished everything-off the bank, through the middle, next to rocks, etc…and didn’t seem to find the fish too concentrated in any one spot, they were spread out fairly well. And, while most of the fish took the small bead trailer, a few good fish took the streamer and I’m sure most of the fish which ate the bead were drawn in by the bigger streamer. Since we fished sub-surface all day Wednesday and I’d heard the weather for Thursday was supposed to be good, I told my clients that we’d try and work the dry the following day.
Thursday started out with a bang, we had two strikes on the flying ant before the anchor was even up, and that’s how the morning continued. Big, darker bodied hoppers and Royal Trudes as lead flies, with the Delektable™ Olive Sparkle Bug or Cinnamon Delektable Flying Ant as a trailer, brought fish up consistently all morning and early afternoon until a 1 o’clock lunch. Early morning fishing was hottest on the banks, the fish were looking for nocturnals and we were one of the first boats down-before the fish had seen a million flies cast to the bank. However, by mid morning we started to notice the fish moving to the shallows and rock slicks. We started getting less strikes on the big flies and we switched the hoppers and Trudes to orange Turk’s and small Half Downed hoppers, imitating the Spruce moths we started seeing on the river. After lunch, we started getting less strikes but were moving bigger fish. A sz.8 cream colored Slammer trailing either the Cinnamon flying ant or the Olive Delektable CDC Holographic caddis in a 14 moved some big fish. We either dead drifted the rig in the middle or were skittering the flies above rocks and which also moved a couple large fish. The day ended with a 20+ inch fish that ate the holographic caddis in the middle, ran for every rock in the river, and came to the boat twice…only to come unbuttoned just above the storey ditch takeout. That’s fishing, right? Go Fishing, Charles P.