September, 2012
9/2: Huge crowds are in the valley this busy weekend, but I was able to get a whole mile of the Eagle River to myself this morning. Just don't ask how. The river's low because of the ongoing drought and even so, it was murky due to a few of yesterday's thunderstorms. I started out casting with a rubber leg on top trailed by a gray colored scud behind.
Nothing doing. It was a bust for the first quarter mile.
In a deeper hole, the brain finally kicked in and I changed to a
double nymph rig - stick fly up front and the same scud behind, but much deeper
in the water column. Noticed a couple of quick strikes and then hooked a
really large rainbow. Played it for maybe ten minutes before actually
getting to release another nice fish this summer - maybe 20 inches long and
possibly 4-5 pounds of a fat hen. Great!
More good fish followed - another bow of around eighteen and several browns between ten and sixteen. What a surprisingly good morning. I've (almost) become a deep nymphing convert. We'll see what happens on Tuesday when we fish the Grey Reef section of the North Platte.
Here's the video of the outing:
9/3-9: This week was time for what's become an annual trip up through Wyoming to visit some of Sue's friends in Red Lodge Montana. Of course the main point is to get in some fishing both going up and coming home. Our results were something of a mixed bag. We think the drought had a lot to do with it.
Going up we stopped at a couple of access points on the Grey
Reef section of the North Platte. Nothing at all doing there. River
was clogged with "floaties", those torn loose sections of bottom
vegetation the river is famous for. Next we tried smaller streams - Clear
Creek near Buffalo and Crazy Women Creek on that same loop road. No fish
yet. Creeks were just too low on water. Hit a spot on Rock Creek
above Laurel and did start to catch a few fish there.
We camped on the West Fork of Rock Creek and again had decent,
if not great success. Ditto with the main part of Rock Creek in Red Lodge
which gave up lots of sub twelve inch rainbows, but not the better ones we saw
on the last trip up here a couple of years ago.
After turning south again we very much enjoyed the fishing on the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone. It might be one of our favorite rivers in the state. Running very low this year, we didn't catch any cuts at all and even the rainbows had a hard time getting to the flies before the abundant whiteys did. I'd guess we hooked nine or more whitefish to one of the small rainbows. Not the best of ratios.
Enjoyed another visit to the Buffalo Cody Center in Cody before driving up the North Shoshone to camp. Nothing at all doing for us on the latter river. Tried everything we could and didn't bag a single strike, much less a fish. No explanation for that.
Last night of the trip was spent on the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie near Lander. Caught lots of little rainbows in this boulder strewn stream, but they were all juveniles.
So we're getting close to the end of fishing for the year. Hate to see it shut down, but maybe next season will bring stronger flows to help both the fish - and the fisher people like us.
Here's a little video of our trip:
9/11: The Colorado River looked fairly clear when we drove over it on Sunday coming back from Wyoming, so today the dog & I tried fishing it around that spot. Wasn't great, but we both had a good time in spite of the iffy weather. Here's a short video description:
9/15: Probably the next to last fishing trip of the season for me. Did a repeat to a seldom visited spot on the Eagle River below that town. Water was very murky still from a big storm that passed through earlier in the week. It took forever to get a hook up, but finally enjoyed some great brown trout nymphing in a hole towards the end of my wade. Except for the two small fish that I landed as a double, the browns were all good sized, in the 16 - 18 inch range.
Tried some more casting upstream behind the fairgrounds with
zero success, but then just above the town, I had wonderful results (at least in
terms of getting strikes) on a batch of rainbows. Must have had a good
twenty five strikes or connections, though landed just a few of them.
Sizes of the bows ranged between 12-18 inches. Almost all the fish today
were taken on the stick fly that's become my favorite lead nymph this fall.
Here's a partial video of the outing. Lost half the clips at the end for some unknown reason:
Last Logbook Entry � for previous day
9/17: Boohoo. Last trout fishing trip of the year. We're out of the country for a couple of weeks starting tomorrow and then will be in Arizona until the middle of December. But for today, it was a couple more hours of enjoyable fishing again.
Big rains this morning could have muddied the river to
unfishability, but we got there before most of the muck had arrived. I
started hooking nice, big rainbows right away but as often happens, the
combination of my bad playing ability and the barbless hooks meant way too many
"long releases". Eventually things settled down and I did manage
to release plenty of fish. Interestingly there were no browns in the mix
today. Nothing but rainbows that ranged from maybe 10-17 inches, although
I did lose a couple substantially larger.
As has been the case lately, the stick fly was the overwhelming favorite followed by a smallish green scud. Towards the end of the outing, my #18 comparadun also took its share of decent fish.
Here's the short video:
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