As you enter the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park which is located on the outskirts of Gardiner Montana you don't drive very far and the first river that you encounter is the Gardner. To many of the visitors the Gardner appears to be that typical brawling western freestone stream as it rush and tumbles on its way to join the Yellowstone River. The Gardner runs close to the road for several miles however many anglers take one look at the rocky bottom and the turbulent water and keep heading further into the park to some of the more famous streams that are easier to wade.

Bugs: Midges can be seen even during winter months as discussed in PART 5. Then spring BWO start to be observed from any time in March. Flies and tactics are very much similar to those applied in the fall (PART 3). In April, as weather gets warmer, caddis can be observed too. Trout rise on each of them with delight. We can expect great dry-fly fishing after long winter. As in the fall, BWO and midge tend to hatch in great numbers on calm overcast days. 
Flies: Here is the list of surface types (adults, cripples, and emergers).
Midge (more patterns in PART 5)

I fly fish a lot. Twelve months of the year and well over 100 days a year on freestone streams and rivers in the Intermountain West and Northern Rockies. Virtually all the trout I fish for are wild and many are native. The Montana trout are wild, if not native, since Montana has not stocked trout in its streams and rivers for a long time. The Idaho trout where I fish are mostly native and wild, although in a lot of places in Idaho there are introduced species and even some stocked fish.

Not as in Serendipity, which is a famous fly, but as in serendipitous, like when a bunch of things come together to cause a particular result. Without listing all the things that converged to make these flies emerge, suffice it so say that it was an unusual set of circumstances that resulted in this fly coming off the vice.

The fly was tied for a very early PMD hatch on my home water in Northern Idaho. Early as in mid-April. And it has been a hatch that produced very large PMDs that hatched somewhat later in the day than the PMDs that I am accustomed to.

It is a week later. I have tied up a few other flies and want to try them on those short strikers. I don't very often hit a pond twice in a row, but I want to know if my experiments will work on the fish.

Closing the back hatch on the Xterra, I turned in clumsy wader boots fighting the loose gravel and headed for the water. It was an early spring morning and today I would be hunting trout. That's what I call streamer fishing when eventual meat for the table is the intended goal. To me it's back to the basics, tying on a traditional Bucktail streamer and pounding water in the places that experience had shown me the trout should be. It goes all the way back to my first days with a spinning rod, flicking CP Swings and Colorado spinners in their silver and gold hammered regalia.

I'm certain that there are readers of Fly Anglers Online that don't remember JC, aka Castwell, but he was an integral part of this online magazine for many years before his death in 2009. Perhaps a short remembrance of a man who was my best friend for many years is in order.