Damn good day.

I can't begin to describe what a great day I had today/now
yesterday. I got a call the night before saying that a particular
species of bugs were beginning to hatch (see PW, I didn't say caddis
or Madison!:-)

CRAP!

Oh well, anyway..... PW and I hooked up to try and get a bit of dry
fly fishing in. I won't speak for Paul, but I am freakin' sick of
nymphing and am always looking forward to fishing dries during this
time of year. The BWOs never seemed to materialize like they
normally do, but the caddis decided to come out a couple of weeks
early. It is probably due to a warm, dry spell we experienced, but
I was so freakin' glad to see those caddis that I almost creamed my
waders. Yeah, I had an orrokeny (SP? where you almost pass out
because all of the blood has rushed from your head to "woodrow").

There was a downside however. The wind was freakin' terrible and
coming straight down the river. I found a pod of rising fish and
was able to sting quite a few without landing any. Paul and I
decided to move closer to town since I had to pick up my daughter
and he had to go buy his wife an anniversary gift. I directed him
to spot that was much more out of the wind and found myself
separated from ol' Paul. Fish started smackin' the surface hitting
adult caddis and I found myself in the most difficult position to
cast. There was a high bank directly behind me with lots of brush
and the wind was blowing directly downstream. Maybe if I had had a
DT line I could of slayed 'em, but all I had was a damn good WF
line. I ended up catching a couple along the bank, lost several
further out due to having to cast all funky, and I mean *funky*.
You would basically cast 45 degrees upstream and have either your
fly hit the water first or fly line hit the water first. One would
drag the other in the exact opposite direction you needed to get a
drag free drift in the various currents. I went to find Paul but he
had left and I had to pick my daughter up so instead of walking back
down to where the fish were really coming up, I decided to leave as
well.

I found Paul at Albertson's and told him about the fishing so we
have a tentative (I'm holding you to Monday or Tuesday) day for a
float trip. The water has really cleared up since we had a cold
spell with more snow for the past week or two. There was probably
about 4 feet of visibility compared to about 2 feet last week. Warm
weather is predicted and the caddis should start really coming off.
Mark Tinsky is thinking about coming down and it should be an
outfreakinstanding day of fishing if the weather holds, sans the
wind.

I got back to my house after picking up my daughter and we barely
had a breeze over here. She wanted to drive her little Barbie Jeep
and take the dog for a walk so we made the slow "drive" (I walked)
the 3/4 of a mile up to the FS trailhead up the road. This is a
damn nice looking creek but they are diverting a hell of a lot of
water right now (see pic 2 on page two of the link I post and look
upstream from my daughter to see the "dam"). You will basically see
what is *left* from the irrigation that flows around the dam on the
right side. The rest flows down the irrigation ditch on the other
side of the mound behind my daughter. You can see where the creek
normally runs by checking the high water mark on the bank. Over the
mound from my daughter I saw at least three fish. None were big,
but they are decent sized native cutts that eagerly rise to a dry.
Since this is the city water supply, they get touchy on irrigation
diversion and shut off all diversion in a couple of weeks. :-) The
fishing doesn't open up until the third week of May for creeks so I
am getting a woody about catching native cutts that range from 8-
14" right down the road. Last summer I was amazed at the numbers
and types of bugs that hatch from this small creek. I get jittery
when I see that nobody other than myself fish this small gem.

Anyway, I digress. So Jodee and I start walking home, or should I
say I, and we get about half way and I look over and see elk. The
batteries in my camera just happened to die up at the trailhead and
I couldn't get a close pic of the elk so I made my daughter truck on
and get back to the house so I could get a fresh set of batteries.
I put in the new batteries and ran out back so I could get a pic of
the elk. The sad part is that the light was failing and I couldn't
get a very good shot with the camera of the elk, but I could have
dropped one with my rifle though. When you see the pic, if you look
at the bottom right and look at the string of animals that works its
way to the left, those are ELK.

All in all, today was a freakin' spectacular day that justifies why
I live in this frozen wasteland for 7 months out of the year! Not
only did I see tons of wildlife (elk, deer, three different kinds of
ducks, several species of birds, rabbits and a mink!), but I got to
experience most of it with my daughter. She did get mad at me
because I went fishing today and she wasn't able to go, so we are
both going tomorrow. Sorry Paul, but just because it is your
anniversary doesn't mean that I can't enjoy the day! g Happy
anniversary BTW!

So here is the link of what pics that I culled from all that I took
and butchered so that I could post them to the net. I need to learn
how some of these people (RW and Willi) are able to edit and post
pics to the web while still keeping file sizes so damn low and
quality so damn nice. Not only that, but I need to learn when to
take off the wide angle lens, when to not shoot into the sun, when
to make sure the lens is clean, etc..... This photography **** is
harder than it looks even given ideal scenery!

http://home.earthlink.net/~troutbum_...404/index.html

--
Warren
(use troutbum_mt on either yahoo or earthlink to respond via email)