Farewell to Fall Colors

On this river anyway.  Time to move on.  Always very hard to leave this one.  Had a busy and productive final morning after a decent morning yesterday.  The afternoons and evenings aren't really happening, despite calm and cloudy conditions the past two days that had blue-winged-olives written all over it.  Next week, when the snow flies.  Probably.  It's been getting better.  I've got other waters to fish though, and only another week or so to get to them, or at least try.  I'll run out of time, as usual.  Never got to Livingston.  No return via the Henry's Fork.  Countless other coulda shoulda wouldas.  But I have a plan, and good memories of October on the MO that will have to get me through until June.  JUNE?  Oh, the finality of it.

Big fish hanging out in this near-slack water every morning.  Lots of 'em.

Never get tired of walking down the hill to this view.  

The fish in here are spooky in the summer at flows of 6500.  Now, at 3,000?  Oh boy.  

For the baetis and midges.  Not enough of a hatch for selectivity.

Another view I just never get tired of.  Every walk in holds promise, especially cloudy calm mornings like this.

The approach to the pig pen.  This morning, it was full of tailing rainbows.  That's right, tailing in the ankle deep water.  Long casts with 10 feet of tippet and a dry fly nobody would believe.

The weeds make resting the fish possible 'cause I sure can't get my hands around a lot of them.

This . . . this is the dry fly.  That's right, grease/powder the head, cast above the fish, dead drift it to 'em, a tiny little twitch or two, and lookout!  So maybe its an emerger.  Maybe its a dead leech.  It has a miniature resemblance to a particular tarpon fly I use.  Whatever the case, it worked wonders in the slow shallow flat of the side channel.  No stripping, just drift and twitch.  Fun stuff.

And look what else worked!  I twitched this one too.  Thanks Bob!

The pig pen.  Still a little current, and a riffle way up top.

Looking down from the riffle to the confluence with the main river.  Sweet spot.

Not to ruin a good post, but this is one of the things wrong with fly fishing now.  Drift boats turned into jet boats, running up and down the MO.  Drift boats floating though the Ranch on the Henry's Fork, one of the last great wade-fishing sections in the mountain west.  I know, they both still fish great, but the atmosphere is waning, and rising fish are being disturbed in ways they once weren't.  Disappointing trend.