I've got a buddy back in Oklahoma that's been wanting to come up to Wyoming with me for a number of years, but it just hasn't worked with his schedule. I didn't think it would work this year either, but with the well-below-average snowpack, things opened up a little earlier than normal and we were able to make a trip. Most years, the streams we fished don't clear until early-to-mid July at least, but this year they were clear by the last week of June.

I was supposed to pick up my buddy at the Casper airport at 9:00 on Saturday morning, so Friday I headed down to the Big Horn Mountains by myself, in order to leave a short drive the next morning. I figured I might as well fish while I was there! I spent about 3 hours on a little stream just off the highway and caught 30 or so fish, mostly rainbows with about 25% brookies mixed in. Nothing big (biggest was about 8"), but a couple of the fish were really pretty.



This was probably the prettiest rainbow I've ever caught:



This guy did not care about me at all:



On my way to Casper the next morning, I got a text that my buddy's flight was delayed, and he wasn't going to get into Casper until after noon. Anyway, I finally picked him up and we headed west. He's done a fair amount of fly fishing, but the vast majority of it has been warm water fishing. The little trout fishing he's done has mostly been on the two Oklahoma tailwaters that are filled with stocker rainbows and aren't exactly the most challenging fish. We finally made it to the mountains and headed to a little stream that's filled with eager, but very spooky, brookies. The fish we were going after on this trip are a lot more wary than the fish he's used to, so I figured this stream would acclimate him to the stealth that's needed to be successful, but would have so many fish that it wouldn't matter how many opportunities he blew.

He spooked all the fish out of the first half dozen holes or so that he fished, but he finally got the hang of it.



This was the typical fish from this stream: