No it is not that kind of Annual Report, like to shareholders. But I’ve been posting these TRs from past summer trips and so here’s another update. Westlopes be westslopes. They love dry flies, and take them oh. So. Slow. Ly. Set!
Day 1, a Wednesday, I got there and found one campsite open in the campground. I took it, unloaded a couple items and drove upstream a very short way to the first fishy looking spot I saw up from camp. The water ended up being just okay as I hadn’t fully tuned in to what to look for (my first time fishing this river in summer having fished it only once before long ago in October during very low water). I worked through a few dinks and then picked up a nice 13”er on a purple parachute pattern out of a super sneaky sort of nothing looking marginal lie.
The fish lived here, toward the bank pictured.
I met up with a friend who was with a group of regulars with decades of experience and they like to float in watermasters. I brought the OSG commander I picked up from a member here and tried that out on a float downstream in bigger water the next day. Unfortunately some kind of front moved in and it seemed to put the fishing off. Since you sit pretty low to the water in the Commander and I was in shorts I was also a tad cool at times when it was cloudy and windy. It also took some doing to figure out how I like to trout fish floating with this group. I ended up figuring out that I just like to pick a real nice piece of water, park the boat downstream of it and then work my way back up covering every possible good looking lie. This approach is driven by my love of dry fly fishing. This day, I mostly ran a PMD cripple trailed by a sunken unweighted ant. I caught fish on both and there were multiple times I had two fish take the flies, sometimes nice fish, and I lost both or only ended up with a little fish. I can’t do it like @Tom Butler I guess and yard ‘em in 2 and 3 at a time.
This fish took the PMD but didn’t get really hooked, but did enough that it wouldn’t eat the PMD again. It also moved over just slightly to a different lie. At least that’s what I think played out! It was a fun interaction.
There is a reason why @Cabezon calls it the Garnet Sands River. This was an impressive deposit. At the bottom of a slight riffle above a slack pool.
To be continued...
Day 1, a Wednesday, I got there and found one campsite open in the campground. I took it, unloaded a couple items and drove upstream a very short way to the first fishy looking spot I saw up from camp. The water ended up being just okay as I hadn’t fully tuned in to what to look for (my first time fishing this river in summer having fished it only once before long ago in October during very low water). I worked through a few dinks and then picked up a nice 13”er on a purple parachute pattern out of a super sneaky sort of nothing looking marginal lie.
The fish lived here, toward the bank pictured.
I met up with a friend who was with a group of regulars with decades of experience and they like to float in watermasters. I brought the OSG commander I picked up from a member here and tried that out on a float downstream in bigger water the next day. Unfortunately some kind of front moved in and it seemed to put the fishing off. Since you sit pretty low to the water in the Commander and I was in shorts I was also a tad cool at times when it was cloudy and windy. It also took some doing to figure out how I like to trout fish floating with this group. I ended up figuring out that I just like to pick a real nice piece of water, park the boat downstream of it and then work my way back up covering every possible good looking lie. This approach is driven by my love of dry fly fishing. This day, I mostly ran a PMD cripple trailed by a sunken unweighted ant. I caught fish on both and there were multiple times I had two fish take the flies, sometimes nice fish, and I lost both or only ended up with a little fish. I can’t do it like @Tom Butler I guess and yard ‘em in 2 and 3 at a time.
This fish took the PMD but didn’t get really hooked, but did enough that it wouldn’t eat the PMD again. It also moved over just slightly to a different lie. At least that’s what I think played out! It was a fun interaction.
There is a reason why @Cabezon calls it the Garnet Sands River. This was an impressive deposit. At the bottom of a slight riffle above a slack pool.
To be continued...
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