How far are you willing to drive for 45 minutes of fishing?

 

With hot sun and temps a good fifteen degrees above normal, it's a good time to ask your wife what she wants done around the house. There is no meaningful relief in sight until the weekend and with the cooling comes thunderstorms that may well put the rivers up again. The heat on my back, shooting the bow, was blistering, but only the BR went over 70 degrees. With the sun lower in the sky the time the sun is on the water is reduced, but the nights are warm and the water temps are creeping up daily.

Tried the BR in the dissipating fog this morning. There were good sized olive spinners in the air and tiny olives hatching. If there was a fish in the river he had his head under a rock. Never saw a rise to my fly or to anything else. Forty-five minutes was enough to let me know I was just wasting time.

With the hot sun there was no need to rush back to the river. Vicky kindly scheduled me for a hair cut at 5:00 and my plan was to hang around Deposit until 7:00 and fish what was a very good hatch last night. In the end I just couldn't do it. The algae is so bad that a hooked fish's eyes are covered on it's first run. When it can't see it just hangs on the end of the line picking up more clumps of algae until the hook rips out or the tippet breaks. 

Went down stream and fished the lower WB. The water was still a bit murky and I caught several chunks of algae on my dry fly but it was much better than up in Deposit. The hatch, however, might generously be described as sparse. There were a few of the larger olives and some of the wee little ones. If you saw a fish rise you walked towards it and made a cast after the fish rose again. It was slow going but there were so few flies that good casts got looks. Fished from 6:45 (too early by half an hour) until 8:00. Was refused by several fish, hooked four, landed three with a 14 inch brown the best of the bunch.

Right now it's just not worth the drive for anyone not living in the immediate area. Many of the better guides are, at present, turning down trips. Be patient, cool fall weather will get things going again.

 Almost forgot, Dave at the Troutfitter said a fisherman was in the shop today, raving about the sulfur hatch at 11:30 this morning???

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