I want to start off this report by telling a story about the “Wall” we have at our house. My Dad and I have been very fortunate over the years to catch some big fish and fill our tags with some beautiful animals. Over time my Mother started putting our pictures up on the wall that runs along the stairs. A couple years ago she realized that she did not have any pictures up there, and she was determined to make the “wall”. She is new to fishing and has caught many fish but none have been worthy of the wall, well at least she didn’t think they were worthy. It wasn’t until this year that she decided she was going to fish hard with the guys; we woke her up at 5 O’clock one morning to take a drive up to the Missouri. The fishing has been incredible in previous days and I knew this would be her chance to make the wall, the dreams of catching a big fish were the saving grace for getting her up that morning. The weather changed and began to warm up significantly which made the fishing more difficult than in previous days. Fortunately we still were able to catch some fish and about mid day fishing deep my Mom hooked up on a beautiful Rainbow; this fish gave us quite an air show running and taking line jumping on opposite sides of the boat. I don’t know who made more noise the fish or my Mom screaming. She was ECSTATIC seeing her face while holding that fish was priceless; everybody on that stretch of the river new she caught a fish and that she made the “wall” because she was screaming it. I made the wall!!!
That day we floated from Holter dam down to Craig. We were fishing Micro Mays, Green Machines and size 20 Copper johns. We also had some luck on Size 8 20 inchers. The depth we were fishing changed but it was in between 4-8 feet depending on where we were fishing with a tippet size of 2x,and 3x Fluorocarbon. When using the 20 Incher as your first fly we did not find any need to add split shot, But if you were to fish double nymph rigs with the smaller flies you needed to add split shot to get the fly down there one BB would suffice, but it is all personal preference. When fishing these double nymph rigs it is important to tie the second nymph on the eyelet rather than the bend of the hook, you will notice an increase of takes and more fish on the “wall”. The important thing was to take your time and fish all the ledges seems and buckets.
Craig
