Last night John LaRue and Mike Keppler came up for some evening fishing. They both teach in Helena so they weren't able to get up to Craig until about 4:30. All morning the clouds were keeping the sun down and wind was reasonably calm. At about 2pm I put my boat in at the Craig Bridge and was going to row up on the flat above Craig because I was sure with the conditions, fish would be up and I could get a couple hours in before the guys showed up. As luck would have it, the wind started blowing, the sun came out and they bumped up the flows so there was tons of debris floating down with the bugs that were hatching. Not great conditions for bringing fish up.
I didn't even go out until the guys showed up because I didn't think it was worth it. Instead I hung out in town and talked to some folks and then went back to the ramp to wait. While I was there I was talking to a gentleman who was just getting off the river. He said it was tough out there, which was consistent with everything I heard from everyone else getting off the river. I was trying to stay optimistic because I had been talking up the fishing to John so I kind of played it off by suggesting that everything could change in an hour or two...
John and Mike showed up right on time and we hit the water. I was so sure the dry fly fishing was going to be good so I didn't even bring a nymphing rod. John had one of his but we told Mike he could leave his gear and just use ours so all we had were two streamer rods with sink tips, one nymphing rod and my brand new 4 weight Hardy rigged up with a parachute Adams and a midge. We started out with Mike nymphing in the front and John chucking streamers out the back.
We went across to the flat just down from the Craig Bridge and actually found a couple fish to feed on top. Keppler got one to eat but they seemed to be a little tougher than what they were the last few days. We went to the riffle at Wagner Creek and got one on the worm and then kept moving down to the next riffle. We started seeing more and more fish up and Keppler got another on a dry fly and then John got one on the streamer. We crossed over to the Hemingway Flats; the wind calmed, bugs started popping like fricken crazy, and all hell broke loose.
For the next couple hours we literally couldn't go 50 feet without having another half dozen targets to throw at. Every fish in the river was up mowing on midges. It didn't really matter what you threw at them either as at some point, the parachute we had on as a lead fly got destroyed so just for kicks John tied on a Royal Coachmen and they smoked that.
We were running out of daylight and I wanted to chuck streamers on my favorite streamer bank so we had to leave a ton of fish behind just to get down there before dark. We got a few on streamers but it was pretty tough. So right towards the end we went back to dries as we rolled up on a pod of good fish I knew had a few big browns in.
I think in ten casts I got eight eats before finally landing one. The first couple were the one's I was looking for so yes, I blew it but it was still a blast. It's tough to go from streamers-getting all jacked up on big eats-and then try not to jerk a dry fly out of a sipping trouts mouth. I obviously didn't meet the challenge but it did give the boys something to give me shit about. In the end that's all that really matters right?
Keep 'em where they live...
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