Dry Flies, Rivers, Trout & Tarpon.: Creek Day

Found a rare cancellation opening for the 23^rd on Depuy’s over the weekend when deciding what to do about the flood on the Missouri. I jumped on it. On the water early, but the first sign of PMD’s was right to the minute at 10 am. Pretty good hatch from then until 2-3.

I still can’t solve that fucking early hatch mystery in that slow water on Eva’s. The one where the fish are eating like pigs all around and in front of me, moving all over side to side big time for the nymphs 2-6 inches under the surface. Then every 15 seconds or so, they rise and take something invisible in the film that’s not an adult, cripple, or spinner. I know what it is. It’s the nymph right at the surface, or just a hair under. But I still don’t have the trigger that makes them turn wildly and get it, or even eat my imitation as it float right down the middle of their eyes. A greased pheasant tail, or something similar fished on a greased tippet, would probably work. A nymph dropper would probably kill it. But I didn’t have any, or go there. I tried all my “crawling out” concoctions I tied this winter, as well as last year’s, but they still weren’t havin’ it. I got schooled for the first half of the hatch.

The cdc loop-wing emerger was what finally started working. Should have stuck with it sooner, but I wanted to try to find what they really wanted. As the bugs thinned just a bit, I also got a little more attention on the buzzer, I mean, Depuy’s Hanger. The one. The little one. I had an eat here and there on the little yellow soft hackle, the pheasant soft hackle, a Harrop LC, a couple on a cdc comparadun, one on a PHD, and a couple of other random picks. Just a charity eat every hundred drifts. I actually saw and caught fish eating duns. When I moved down lower to the faster water below the log at Eva’s, things got much easier. The morning would have been easier there too, but I wanted those ones above the log.

Those flats fish were son of a bitches early-on. Entertaining, frustrating, educational, and occasionally rewarding. The way I like it in hindsight, but no so much when I was making perfect drift after perfect drift without so much as a refusal while the fish were chowing down. I’ll float a nymph next month if I need to, just to see.

The rest of the story . . . After an early dinner and Blizzard, I returned about 6pm. Shortly after, once the very first shadows touched the far side of the creek, the spinner eating began. It was like a different creek. Every fish I cast the yellow soft hackle to attacked it. It was like throwing pellets in a hatchery raceway. Just nuts, even before the shadows fully covered the water. The spinners and mosquitos were about equal in number, and I donned my light rain jacket and covered myself in Picaradin to keep from getting sucked dry. From the top of the curve down, it was damn near fish-a-cast. After the best fish at 8:45, I knew when to say when.

The day started as an exercise in futility, and ended like Disneyland. All in a summer day on Depuy’s.