Big Hole River 2220 cfs, temp. 59
We went way up river to Squaw Creek Bridge to put in just so we would not see any other boats and we didn’t. The float was fantastic with green alpine meadows covered with wild flowers. Unfortunately the fishing was not so fantastic. The high light of the day was a fat 18 inch brook trout. In all my years on the Big Hole that’s about the biggest one I have seen. Lots of fish were caught on stimulators and such but were fairly small. Stone fly nymphs worked well for awhile . It was a bright windy day, just what we did not order. We say a total of two salmon fly’s and I believe we are in the tail end of that hatch.
Where do they come from? I just talked to a friend of mine who was guiding in the Divide area and he said he saw one guy who was floating by himself and the next thing he noticed the guy was floating down an irrigation ditch panic stricken cuz he was heading right into the head gate. He managed to get the boat stopped and was hanging on for dear life when Shawn went over and helped him haul his boat over the bank and back in the river. During this time with the salmon fly hatch we see some pretty strange things.