Wet Wading

The time has come to leave the waders at home. David and I headed out and did just that and the water felt nice and cool on the legs. Ok, it was actually pretty freezing but our legs went numb pretty quick and it never bothered us. By any means it was better than having to pull on your waders and the air temperature balanced out the cool legs since it was probably near 90 degrees. The water was high but clear and since it was a Saturday the parking lot was a mad house. On any given summer's day there are about a million people floating down the river in their tubes or rafts. Most people seemed to be pulling out of the river upstream from us which was nice so we only had the occasional floater passing through our hole along with the occasional sandal.

There were either some golden stoneflies or yellow sallies making their presence known but the fish were not keyed in on them too much, at least where we were. Occasionally there would be a violent rise but we stuck with nymphing for most of the afternoon. There were also some Pale Morning Duns (PMDs) around but again not too much surface action. Due to the high churning water the fish were probably feasting on the above mentioned bugs in their nymphal stage along with a variety of other tasty morsels that the river offers up. It was by no means a lights out catching day but we had somewhat consistent action during our time on the water. David was having luck early on with a green zebra midge and all of mine were coming on a gold ribbed hares ear. After the action tapered off a bit I threw on a crystal bugger and started dead drifting it with a tight line. After a few casts something slammed it and I brought to hand a beautiful little rainbow.


This fat little football made me more inclined to experiment more with streamers while fishing rivers. I was raving about how fun the hit was so David tried sight fishing to some browns holding along the bank with a bugger and managed to get one to suck it down, however the fish was stubborn and did not get hooked. Overall it was a great summer's afternoon of fishing.








Journal Notes:
-Flow: 818 cfs
-Air Temp: approx. 90 F
-Water Temp: 52 F
-Successful Flies: Gold Ribbed Hares ear, green Zebra midge, rainbow black Crystal Bugger, Pheasant Tail
-Hatches: Golden Stones/Yellow Sallies, PMDs