Young Dan and I were fortunate enough to get the same day off from working in the shop. We have been watching the river and listening to others reports and decided that floating the upper river in part of the wade section would be a good bet. We floated from Pine butte down to Windy Point. The day started off a little slow, the river rose a foot and the water was green with about a foot of visibility. We missed a couple fish right away using the Delektable Olive Hurless flashback with a Caddis emerger following it. We used 10 foot leaders adding weight as needed. The water color looked great with a little murk until we hit the West Fork. Mud was dumping out of there. So, this is where we got the famous San Juan worm out:)
Later on in the float we ran into a spot where muddy water was coming in on both sides, Dan suggested we fish it and see what happens. It wasn’t ten minutes before we had a double on. Both of the fish took the worm right on the seam; a few more fish were taken out of this spot before we moved on. The rest of the day went the same way, Muddy water and some fish throughout. We spent the day Nymphing using long leaders and a lot of weight. We would start off with one B and keeping adding some as needed. Dan put a Delektable Olive Hurless Flashback size #8 on with a very pink size #8 San Juan (with a hotbead) as the dropper. They loved the worms and one trout even had worms pouring out of his mouth when we pulled him up, straight gorging. Dan kept the pink worm on and kept changing out the stonefly patterns. We did really well with the combo. We went thru all the juicy Skwalla patterns we had, but they just seemed to only want the worm that day.
Craig and Dan
May 30, 2012
Two Expert Guides/Outfitter and a new Shuttle Guy…
We floated Raynolds Pass to Pine Butte. You can get out of the boat and wade fish, no fishing from a boat. Dan on the oars the first part of the trip, Marty getting in shape for summer guiding finishing up. Dan is a ballerina handling Nancy’s drift boat. You need to be an expert oarsman on the upper part of the Madison.
Excellent fishing with conditions ideal. Overcast with no wind or rain. Big stones mostly, Delektable Hurless and sometimes Delektable Lil’ Spankers. The bottom not to difficult to wade, but the river is fast. Dan and Marty might dispute, but the new guy Rog had the big Brown of the day. All had great fish, Bows and Browns mostly in the 16-18 inch range. Elk, antelope, eagles, osprey, and of course plenty of fish, all in an excellent day of wade fishing.
Roger
