Long Over Due!

I don't know how they do it. These guides and outfitters that keep up with their blog during long strings of consecutive guide days. I have been guiding hard including a 15 straight run. Tying flies every night and/or morning and briefly visiting with my family has kept me away from the updates that I had hoped to keep up with. I will try and catch everyone up.

The June fishing we had this year was about as good as it gets. I covered the Salmonflies pretty well already but the Bitterroot golden stoneflies were spectacular. I had the pleasure of guiding Jim and Mia and their family the last week of June and we had as fine of dry fly fishing as you could have. Here is a pic of Mia with one of many this size that she landed.



The fish came out of the woodwork literally and if you fished around log jams you had it made.

The first week of July was pretty good too but with rapidly dropping water and warm water temps things became much more of an early morning / late even show. I must say that the Clarkfork river is showing signs of its former self. The fish are very large and incredibly healthy. The rainbows here fight as hard as any you will find anywhere and the numbers are improving since the dam removal set them back about 6 or 7 years ago. There were some evenings where there were so many bugs that it was difficult not to accidentally eat a few. During these times there were fish rising all over the river.

As July progressed the water started to get warm. While a few people took some pics, I wanted to get the fish back in as quickly as possible so sorry not many pics are going to be posted until things cool down around mid August when the cool and longer nights will drop the temps and bring about some great hopper and trico fishing.

I did get a nice shot of a Missouri Trico swarm.



The fish on the Missouri below Holter dam are very fat and also very picky. Seems like they only wanted to eat #18 and #20 sized patterns. Here is one that was tricked.



Here is one that was not tricked. He was very good at detecting fakes but I did get his picture.



Things are slowing down a little now so hopefully I will get to posting more often.

One last pic. The bucks in the neighborhood have pretty much grown most of their antlers at this point. Now if I could get one to pose nicely for me. Chased them around for a couple minutes before meeting my fishers one morning and this was the best I could do. I will keep trying.