River Conditions: 8/7/16

Water Clarity: Clear

Water Temperatures:  59-70

Hatches: Sulphurs, Light Cahils, Hoppers, ISOs, Tricos, Flying Ants

Suggested Patterns: Iron Sally #14-16, Anderson’s Bird of Prey #16, Yellow Softy, Pheasant Tails #14-18, Copper Johns #14-18, Kyle’s BH C-N Sprflash #16-18, Bob’s Softy   Red and Copper, Hare’s Ears #14-18, Light Cahils #14-16, Elk Hair Caddis Olive #14-16, More of Less Hopper #6-10, VW Hopper #8-14, Bionic Ant #14-16, Black Ant #16-18 Zonkers #6, Montana Mouthwash #6,  Muddler Minnows #6-10, Wooly Buggers Olive #6-10.

Things have continued to stay relatively warm over the past few days so if you’ve got trout on your mind you’re gonna have to hit the smaller tributaries and target Brook trout for the most part. Some of the small mountain streams around do hold some surprisingly large fish and every once in a while they’ll come out to play in low water conditions. The next few nights it’s going to be cooling off significantly so there could be some bigger water opportunities in the next couple of days. Because there’s such little water right now lots of the rivers will cool off relatively quick at night when the air temps drop. If we do get the opportunities to hit some of the larger streams focus on the pocket water. You’re going to find the most fish in those areas as that is where the most oxygen will be in the river in these conditions. A great way to disect these pockets is to Euro Nymph. When Euro Nymphing/Tight Line nymphing you’re going to want a longer rod than what you would normally use. A 10-11ft 3-4wt is a perfect rod for this. I like the Douglas rods for this but the Fenwick Aetos would be a slightly less expensive alternative. Having the longer rod helps you reach further and allows much more control over your flies. When tight line nymphing you do not want to have any slack in your line (hence the term tightline) and you also really don’t want to have much is any fly line off the tip of your rod. With this style of nymphing, your leader is going to be 12-15′ long. A heavier anchor fly is generally fished with a smaller, lighter fly 12-18″ above it. This will help get your flies down quickly and allow you to have a better feel when working each pocket.

We still haven’t seen any flying ants hatch but that could be any day now. Aside from that, the tricos are still hatching pretty well on some streams around. We’ve had reports of ISOs starting to hatch as well, the only downside to that is the rivers they’re hatching in are too warm to fish right now. Still some Sulphurs kicking around as well as Light Cahils and some Stoneflies. Hoppers have been killing it lately too! The bass are still a great alternative right now as well. The surface temps in a lot of the lakes have been between 75 and 80 which is pretty dang warm. A bit warm for smallmouth, you’re going to have to go deep for smallies or fish inlets where cold water is coming in from small streams. The largemouth won’t mind as much and you should be able to have some fun with them on topwater bugs in the heavy weeds. The trick with those fish is to cast where you wouldn’t even consider it. They like hanging out in real thick matts of weeds so if you’ve got a fly with a wire weed guard throw it into the thickest of the stuff and hang on.

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