Up the Creek with a Spinner

 Same seven days, different year.  The water is usually the same, the fishing is usually different.

This is the empty lot I want to see as I drive into Armstrong's

After raining off and on most of last night and very early this morning, it let up but remained cloudy all morning.

The hatch starts very late morning and then appears to fizzle out.  It suddenly fires back up again pretty good from 12:30 to 2:30.  These fish are not as easy as those in that creek in Wyoming!  I catch a few and get some eats but mostly I'm taken to school by the PMD hatch.  The floating nymph is the most productive emerger, and the mole gets some eats.  Nothing stands out as what they want, in the stage they want.  Rain moves back in for the second half and I return to see what is happening before sunset.  A few spinners are around and I take a few fish with those, but nothing to text, er, write home about.

Showers stay around

Evening at camp after day one.

Day two starts out like day one, only with less cloud cover.  An occasional fish eats a couple of size 32 midge larvae now and then, but nothing gets going until about 10:30.  The hatch makes sporadic appearances until early afternoon, then really gets pumping for about an hour and a half.  I fish a little better with the floating nymph.  Just enough eats to keep things interesting.  I'm just about to think that this is going to be two of the tougher days in a row I've ever had on this creek, and then the wind increases again and covers the water with cotton so bad fishing is impossible.  Back to the truck for lunch, but I don't leave.  Soon one of the clouds from the west rolls over with a thunder shower.  Then another.

Following those half hour bursts, the clouds blow past and the wind lays down to nothing.  The sun pops back out, and spinners come out of the grass and onto the water around 4:30.  The fish get stupid on the spinners until I quit around 8.  Tish are still rising and I'm still catching 'em.  CDC spinners, jacked-up cahills, hackle spinners, para spinners.  It doesn't matter.  Like different fish in a different creek compared to the middle of the pmd hatch at noon.  A whole late afternoon and early evening of taking candy from a baby.  If only they would eat duns like that.  And so ends day two at Armstrong's.

Perfect evening conditions

Downstream on the creek for day three.  I get in at 10am sharp, and there's not a soul in sight at the fly shop run.  Kind of spooky, especially for July.  What's wrong?  Creek is quiet.  A fish rises on the far bank of the riffle in that little "normal" spot I've taken so many.  Nothing visible on the water except a blizzard of cotton, so the obvious choice is Bob's Ant.  Six or 8 casts to get it just right, and the rainbow eats.  One rise, one fish, and nobody around.  I'll take it.

Just me

Pre-hatch must-have.

A bigger fish eats the ant as an approaching vehicle breaks the silence.  Its Buzz, but still. By 10:30, mid-river targets start to show.  I still don't see any bugs, so I go to the soft hackle, still fishing my short tippet from last night.  Its breezy, so it works with the supple furled butt section.  Bugs are still sparse, a spinner here and a hatcher there.  Wind changes from upstream to downstream, back and forth.  By 11:30, its a full blown hatch with risers everywhere.  The softie gets ignored, refused, and sometimes eaten.  I hear the thunder from the first big storm nailing Livingston.

I've worked down to the sweet spot, the tiny slough where there's probably still a polarizing filter I dropped in the mud a few years back, and where I took a cold swim with a foot stuck in the mud one cold October bwo day.  Its 12:30, the north wind howls upstream, and the party is instantly over.  Oh the potential, if I can just get a calm mid-day.  Just me and whole shitload of trout.

Pretty typical

It lays down at 3:00, clouds of spinners cover the water, and then it blows at 3:30.  Later there's another hatch, but lighter than the first one.  Everything today is to the extreme, and in an instant.  If I had blinked, I'd have missed everything.

Spinner they liked

The 4th of July is a day for fireworks, unless you're in Montana, then its the whole damn week.  So today is the tomorrow I was thinking about yesterday. I get to the river around 9am, and there's already a couple guys set up below the slough.  I take the long flat above it, and all is quiet until the duns show around 10:30, reaching full speed at 11:30.  (sounding familiar)  By early afternoon, both duns and spinners are on the buffet line.  The wind takes a break today, and it makes a huge difference.  Just what I signed up for, even with a mid-afternoon lunch break.  Its one of those unhurried, relaxed, "They're not going anywhere" days.  They're still rising when I quit at 4:00.  The Depuy's Hanger steals the show all afternoon, just like the old days.  The grizzly hackle spinner, loop wing emerger, and brown/partridge softie carry the morning; punctuated by Bob's Ant for a couple of obligatory early fish.

When they get on it, they get on it!

There's some of these in there too.

After rip-city yesterday, I decide to get a change of scenery, down below the house.  There's a little hatch around 11ish, but nothing like yesterday's upstream.    Not sure if its the section, the constant bright sunny day, or neither.  Just mediocre, though I do get a few, and stop by 2pm.  I go back upstream for the spinner fall, and from 6 to 8 the whole smooth run looks like a riffle. Spinner madness. Three down, two to go.

Day four is warmer with 10am spinners, the standard 11:30 hatch with the fish still eating spinners, and the 2pm thunderstorm with wind.  Fish come up after the quick storm for another couple of hours.  Then evening spinners, all I want.  A solid day, just like the Fourth.

The spinner winner.  Last of the day.

The last day is just different.  Apparently word is out on the great fishing at Betty's Riffle because there isn't even room to park at 9am around the fly shop.  After searching down the creek, I end up parked at the lowest lot, where there is nobody.  Not sure where Tom is today, but he's not there in his usual spot.  Nothing happens until,  . . . wait for it . . . 11:30, then a mediocre hatch brings some fish up.  Mostly smaller fish, but I work all the way down the run and around the corner staying busy for a couple of hours.  The lull sets in around 2:30. I'm back upstream, this time on the PHD pool, about 4:30.  There's a few fish doing it, and I do it right back. Its been a one-fly day, Tom's magic little soft-hackle in a sparse 16.  He knows his fly fishing history, and this fly goes back to the earliest writings.  They all eat it like candy.  As the sun falls lower after 6pm, people start to leave.  By 7, DW and I have the whole place to ourselves for the spinners.

Lower creek sweet spot

Down the creek

Quail feather wrapped in front of a dubbing ball to flare it.  Oldest school spider.  North country.  That's it.  Some things never change, and this one goes back centuries!

Toward the Yellowstone

PHD brown

Last evening shadows, last evening everything.

So, I got really lucky with the timing this year.  Perfect weather and temperatures, even with the winds on day one.  Good fishing and hatch windows every day.  The big summer heat wave is coming quick, temperatures in the mid to high 90's about everywhere.  I've had a great 4-week run!

Kelly's spinner does it all.  It floats like a cork (it really does!), its easy to see on most any glare, and has that bent, dead look that the fish love.

Kelly's spinner.