Catching Up-Late June 2013

I had a day off today, which means getting some paper-work done and of course; golf. I shot an 84--not my best but respectable. Right now I have the 29th of June off and then not another day off until the 20th of July. In fact, I only have 4 days off now until the first of August and I'll probably book a couple of those. You gotta make hay, right?

So the fishing is getting a little tougher in spots and remains the same in others. I've seen a bunch of yellow sallies in spots and those spots tend to fish really well. I've also seen some huge golden stone flying around, a couple drakes when there are clouds and there are still tons of caddis in the evenings and PMD's. The Canyon seems to be the hot spot. Cascade has started to slow down a bunch.

I took these guys down low yesterday because that's what they wanted and I love that water. It's been getting pounded down there this spring and it seems like the fish down there are a little spookier than other places so you knew it was going to shut down at some point.

We did fine in the morning hooking fish but the landing was a little bit of a problem. We did boat a few though but also were getting a bunch of whitefish. We moved to the riffles and the hard water thinking whities are lazy and don't like fast stuff but...We shortened the rigs up fishing further off the bottom and still...more whities. We fished the seems...whities. We even went natural colored nymphs with no bead-head and yep, more whities. Just about everything I've heard that whities like, we went the opposite but we still caught whitefish. So the question is; would you rather catch white-fish or no-fish?

Like I said though, we did have opportunities for trout early and landed a few. We even got one brown over 20 but as the sun got higher and stronger, the trout said goodnight and the whitefish came out to party. I'm not really sure what the deal is with that, whether it's because the trout are moving upstream and they are now out-numbering and out-competing the trout or maybe, and this is just a hunch, but maybe there are a lot of drakes coming out in the evening and after dark and the trout party is going all night. I know there are still a lot of fish on that stretch and if we get a cloudy day and the drakes come out early, I think you'll see just how many big browns are still down there.

By the way, we had a group of big horns up on the hill behind the house yesterday. We don't normally see the rams this low until the rut but these guys were just hanging out and one of them looks legal. I'm not sure if they were coming down because it's too dry or if they are just passing through. I'm guessing they were just passing through.

Keep 'em where they live...