I bought a new zoom lens for my Nikon last week so I took it up to a few of my favorite fishing holes and shot some pictures. You may have noticed some of them in the slide-show in the right column. I'm still trying to figure the camera out but it's been fun and sometimes it all comes together and you can get some interesting shots. This little riffle is undoubtedly underwater now as the flows on the Dearborn have doubled in the last couple days. Rain and warm weather is driving the run-off now, which will have an impact on the lower Missouri.
I took my guy from the Missouri River Lodge down to Cascade yesterday. The clouds never moved out and a north wind, even just 5 mph, made it pretty cold but I figured the fishing would be good and it might be our best chance at seeing heads up on BWO's.
It started slow but we did hook up a few on the nymph rig. We switched to streamers pretty early just to see what would happen. It didn't so the first real good nymph-run and we went back to dredging the bottom with the double-dirt rig. The conditions were actually really good with a little debris in the river and overcast skies. As long as you have a couple feet of visibility, having some stain in the water can help keep the fish from getting too spooky and they tend to look for bigger bugs. The nymph fishing picked up and after landing a dozen or so, we switched back to chucking and ducking.
I can't say the streamer fishing was epic in the afternoon but we did bring a fair number to the net and moved a few more. It was definitely worth doing, especially if you're looking for that once-in-a-lifetime pig of a brown or you just enjoy seeing browns pummel your fly at a hundred miles an hour. We took a side-channel and were picking up a couple fish along the banks when we noticed a nose peeking up just inches from the grass eating BWO's. It was the first nose I've seen along the bank sipping, which usually means a really good fish.
I put the breaks on and pulled in along the bank about 35 yards upstream from the rising fish. We rigged up the dry-fly rod with a parachute Adams and a midge. Fish rising like this can be pretty tough because they're right along the bank and they won't usually move even a few inches into the heavier water to eat. You have to be right on their nose and you have to get a good drift and they don't want to see any fly-line. When it's perfect though, the pay-off can be pretty big.
I pulled away from the bank and let the boat ease down into position. Dan took a couple casts just outside from where the nose was coming up. He did get a cast over him but with a belly heading downstream in the heavier current, his flies started dragging right of the top of where the fish was coming up.
"You're getting drag," I said and as Dan lifted his rod to take another cast and the flies came up off the water, this 20 inch brown launched almost all of the way out of the water and absolutely annihilated his Adams.
"Holy!" I said and as Dan pinned him, we both almost fell out of the boat laughing. So much for drag-free drift.
We went back and forth from nymphing to streamers with an occasional shot at more heads coming up as we made our way down through Cascade. It was a great day. We caught PLENTY of fish and caught them just about every way a person could--and we only saw one other boat until we got to the take-out. The BWO's were popping and as long as the tribs don't kick too much mud into the river, this week should only get better and better.
Keep 'em where they live...
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