We had a great family day off. It was big to get Me out of the shop for a full day of fishing IMG_0833 SM IMG_0845 SM IMG_0853 SM IMG_0849 SMaway. It was great fun and very entertaining. The salmon flies were there and golden stones and caddis. Even the fish entertained us. We saw one good sized trout rise twice above the surface almost jumping into our raft, it jumped so high. The water was perfect, the true tea color of the Big Hole.

We had a full mix of weather conditions similar to the previous day with changes in wind patterns to 30 miles an hour against us and some pretty big storms, then sunny and calm, then big weather again. That was very interesting casting and rowing. We started off with a Royal Chubby and a nymph trailer with some action, more on the top. We were seeing tons of Caddis out and seeing rising fish so I changed to a double dry Caddis and Allie changed her dropper. Allie got more hits on her combo and I did not get hardly any hits on the caddis combo. Then we started seeing more Salmon Flies and switched to one of Dan’s special Salmon Flies with a custom dubbed body. I call them furry tummy Salmon Flies. The trout really went for this fly on a regular basis. The next trick was to figure out how to land them. I was out of practice and with the salmon flies, you have to wait an extra second to let them gulp it. I was very entertained while missing a several trout. Allie was the champ scoring many, both on the dry and the dropper.

Dan stopped in a side channel and got a really nice fish in the quiet water but we missed getting the photo. He caught a half dozen more fish in the same area same fly combo. Further down river the Goldens were really coming off and we switched to the furry tummy Golden and it was my turn to catch more. The fish were really biting. Funny thing is with Salmon flies, the fish do tend to hit more with the wind and weather than in the calm as that is what causes the big flies to fall in the water.

What a fun day! Thanks for rowing Dan!

Nancy

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