Big Hole River 2060 cfs. temp. 52
Yesterday the fishing was fair. I had a rookie in the boat who had never thrown streamers and he caught about ten with the biggest being 18 inches. It took a fair amount of time and coaching but he finally started presenting the fly where it should be and when he did that he got hookups. Last night the river came up about 300 cfs which made today’s fishing pretty tough. Peter and his friends from Missoula were on the river and didn’t do very well and those boys know how to fish. I just pulled up the graph and noticed that in the last four hours the river is starting to drop again. This afternoon on the upper river there were a few very large caddis starting to show up. Forecast for tomorrow is cloudy and very cool so the river should continue to drop.
I had a very long report from the boys on Andros. They didn’t get the grand slam but they had shots at the tarpon. The good news is they wound up getting two permit along with several bonefish. I have never caught a permit on Andros so of course I’m envious, to be honest I have never even seen a permit there and for those guys to get two in one day—–my hat is off to them.
It was a perfect day according to Tony. No wind and good visibility. They were into the interior of the island up Fresh Creek about as far as you can go. His son was on deck with the bonefish rod when Herman started screaming, PERMIT, PERMIT. Tony quickly grabbed the rod with the crab fly and handed it to his son. There was a school of about thirty of them and they nailed one. The excitement was soon drenched by a down pour that lasted about half an hour. After it let up they went further up the creek and found another school of permit, only bigger. Several shots were made from fifteen to sixty feet but they would not eat it. In desperation Tony put on a pink puff fly with big barbell eyes just for the hell of it and wouldn’t you know they ate it. Then they went into this narrow channel looking for tarpon again but all that rain had muddied it up. (sounds like the Big Hole). They saw a big silver flash in front of them and knew it was tarpon and the next thing they saw was the tarpon streaking by them next to the boat.
All in all it was a fantastic day. He said the only down side was being that far into the interior of the island and with no wind the doctor fly’s were so bad they needed a blood transfusion when they got back. I think the transfusion they had is called a Hanky Panky.