Big Hole River 412 cfs Beaverhead River 530 cfs
It has been a rather wet and cool summer and it continues. Not complaining mind you as flows have been great and fishing has been good most of the time. There are some days when the brown trout are just off and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it.
I floated the Beaverhead today and it was my first trip there this season. We had a great time with lots of action. It was basically a R&D trip so we tried lots of stuff except nymphs which is the norm down there. We had good action on top right off the gitgo with hopper patterns. After we got a few hits on a certain pattern we changed to try a new one. That is what an R&D trip is all about. We tried five different hopper patterns and had success with all of them. Some were better than others but that’s what we looking at.
When it came my turn to fish I chose a double articulated streamer. Like the old saying, “go big or go home”. Lots of action with many more boils and chases than hookups but that’s the fun with a streamer. Most streamer junkies don’t care about the hookup as long they get the chase. lt’s like creating hate and discontent among those brown trout.
Another technique that was getting lots of action was skating crane fly’s. We didn’t have any crane fly’s so we skated hoppers and such and had lots of hits and chases, not that many hookups with that but again the fun is getting the fish to chase the fly. These like streamers the fly had to be rippen across the water.
Chuck was on the Big Hole today with some of my guys and reported lots of baetis action but they had to go really small.
What about this report I just got about a skunk getting into George’s fly shop in Melrose and creating havoc?