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Ya, ya, shootin' fish in a barrel.  But the end is near.  Ya, ya, I keep saying that too, but its true.  And there are still plenty of challenging casts and challenging fish.  I ain't quite MO'd out.  After yesterday's soggy day, It sure felt good fishing in mostly sunny conditions with warmer air in the 50's and little wind.  Might be the last of that for a while too. Left the clouds and 30's behind in Bozeman/Livingston.

The hatch was going when I got here at 10, and was pretty decent through around 2:00 or so.  Then it thinned a little, but there were just enough fish up to fish until dark.  Always a target to cast to.  They ate the bigger bugs (18's) off and on.  At one pod, I changed flies after each fish just because I could, and I think it helped keep the eats coming.  Wasn't anything that didn't get at least an eat.  Seems there's one or two fish in a pod that will eat a certain bug, but no more than that.  The did show a preference for the more sparse #20's, but I tied on whatever I could see on a certain lane.  The black, white-winged hanger got a lot of love after the sun went behind the hill.  The parachute emerger worked good all day, and best when I cut off the wing and just had the curved biot body and hackle still left.  The little RS2-like cdc emergers shined as well.  It really didn't matter, but the sparser, the better.

With temps in the 30's and 40's the net couple days with considerable clouds and showers, it could just get silly-good.  I'm game.  Camped at Stickney 'cause they have Wolf Creek Bridge torn up good.  Its fine except the internet/cell service is hit and miss.  Two meager bars come and go.  Guess its enough. Water is down to 3840, lowest of the season!  Still a ton of salad floating down.

The old standby.  It worked better with the wing cut off, leaving only hackle and a stub.

This thing really got ate.  Fly of the morning.  Its the remnants of some Anderson floating nymph I got last summer.

The fish said this little #20 was tasty.

For a couple of picky ones later on

I picked on this pod of fish twice over a couple hours.

This is a loop wing emerger that I cut the back of the loop on.  Made a "cut wing" emerger?  It hung better and they loved it.

Surprisingly a lot of eats during the last hour on this #18.  The fish probably couldn't see as good then either..