Fished my home water from about 1:15 to 4:30 p.m. today. The weather was delightful - mostly cloudy, no wind, and temps in the lower 30's. No ice in the guides today, first time out this year without ice to deal with. There was a sporadic midge hatch going on, but very few rising fish. Not enough to think about fishing a dry fly.

Fished the brown rubber legs nymph. Got a whitefish ( aka Rocky Mountain bonefish ) right away, and another three bonefish and a 17" brown, fairly quickly. Then it slowed down, way down.

So I headed further upstream, as much to explore the next run as to fish it. Did catch one whitefish in that stretch, but more important, got a good look at the run. More change. One stretch of water, along the near bank anyway, that was a good three feet plus deep last year is now about a foot deep, a good 30' out from the bank. Hard to believe that the river moves that much rock every year, especially stuff that is up to a foot in diameter, but it does. Not sure how this will effect the fishing this spring, but will know in a month or so.

Got back to my starting point about 3:00. Considering how slow it had been, I seriously thought about heading for home. Decided to give it a little more time. Good decision. Between a little after three and 4:30, I landed three browns and somewhere around fifteen bonefish. Plenty of action and some pretty nice fish.

Two of the browns for the day went 14-15" and the other two were around 17". Most of the bonefish were pretty routine. But one was one of the larger whitefish I have caught in the South Fork - went over 20", and he really pulled when he took off. If whitefish had the staying power of trout, people would target them as a matter of routine.

John