I just checked the forecast and there is a snow advisory for later tonight and tomorrow. Now for some that would be bad news but for us it’s great. We’ll take all the moisture we can get and the fish bite like crazy when it’s snowing. I was looking at some photos of years past where we were floating down the river while it was snowing and all the fish in the photos were big.
I remember an incident when Claude the frenchman first booked a trip with me at about this same time of year. We were launching the boat and it started snowing rather heavily. At about the same time two rigs pulled up from one of the fancy lodges with their boats in tow and the clients peeking out of the windows. The guides got out and stuck their thermometers in the river. After reading the results they yelled back to the clients (who had not ventured out of the vehicle) that the water temp. was too cold to catch any fish and they left. Claude looked at me and with his French accent asked ” big al, what to you tink”. I answered with I tink we tie on a pumpkin bugger, get in the boat and catch some fish. I rowed across the river to hit a seam coming off a small island. Claude placed the bugger just right inside of the seam and the line instantly jumped. We had a 20 inch brown trout and we had not gone 100 feet down the river. Claude was elated and all he could say was “big al I don’t tink da water too cold”. For years following that was always a standing joke with Claude but the bad thing was he would not fish with anything but a pumpkin bugger from then on.