This is sort of a Salmon Fly Hatch fishing report, if you've got patience for it.
I drifted the Big Hole in Montana the other day. As we approached Melrose off the interstate I could see a non-stop stream of driftboats heading up river toward Divide. "They're hatching in the Maidenrock Canyon," said the store owner. "I'll head downstream then," I said, thinking the next drift down would have hatched already. But much to my surprise the Melrose to Glen stretch hadn't hatched yet at all. Salmon Flies usually hatch down low on the river first, and then the hatch slowly moves upstream with warming water temperatures.
Sometimes, if it's been cold and rainy and the hatch is delayed, the whole river pops at once when the sun finally comes out. But this was the first time I ever saw the flies hatch upstream before downstream. The fishing was tough. The water was high and fast and there weren't any bugs of any kind. The only night hawks we saw were circling high overhead. I only saw one rise all day long: a hidden swirl underneath a foam hat in the eddy behind a log. I had to row most of the way. But I did anchor up to work a few riffle drops by hand. And we only caught a few fish, despite working pretty hard. The few we caught were fat and healthy. But hard to come by in those conditions. Lyle's Choice and the Marshmallow Nymph were the only flies we had a hit on all day. And I tried everything. Lyle's Choice is a brown and yellow Yuk Bug designed by Lyle Reynolds, who used to run the Sunrise fly shop in Melrose. The Marshmallow Nymph is my invention. It is a good fly. Even when it's tough:
This fly is made from brown-dyed open-cell polyurethane mattress foam, a 3/16" tungsten bead and a few rubberlegs. I often fish it with a smaller bead head trailing behind, knotted on the bend of the Marshmallow hook in front.
.....I just noticed I had close to a dozen messages in my yuku inbox. I use google gmail, and it seems
messages from yuku where getting marked as spam. So I never knew I got any of those messages. Some of them months old.
So I wasn't being unfriendly. Just deaf dumb and blind.
Final PS. Actually we did catch one nice 17" brown on a Pea-Sucking Leech. Or maybe it was an Egg Sucking
Leech with a chartruese egg up front. There was one odd but interesting thing about that brown: it had a heron hole punctured completely through the fish, from
one side to the other. Damn fish was still frisky. Still banging streamers and still fighting hard on the hook. I doubt any heron could swallow a brown that
size. But he sure did have a side-to-side hole right through, just underneath the dorsal fin.
