Some warm days had the local streams on the rise and off the color (not that I planned to stay on this side of the Divide - grouse to attend to) so I headed for cleaner water.
Drive along the south boundary of the park; decent amount of snow (hold some of that back for Summer, okay?)
KGPR was reporting a grassland fire (1000 acres) on the edge of the Bob and darned if it didn’t come into view a few minutes later (firefighters got it 60% contained within a couple days and 10" of snow pretty much put it out)
Scored a good site, established base camp and started collecting photons for later use
Word at the shop was nymphs, but the bwo’s were starting to come off and there was a chance of finding fish looking up. Headed up to the top to get a handle on the place and check the flows (usually a good spot to wash the skunk off).
Skunk washed (rest of the fish on this water were variations of this specimen, give or take a few inches)
A good number of bugs showed (lots more as the weather deteriorated later in the week) but I never saw a single fish up on them; maybe the boat jockeys Mid or Lower Canyon found heads poking out.
Good water everywhere; crowds weren’t bad early on, but picked up as the week went by. A few guides with 4 plates moved in to the campground; guess the early stages of runoff season put their streams off.
Got a tip to try a nearby stillwater; ice was off, big fish in the shallows. Deal me in.
Too much cloud cover for Chamber of Commerce views, but very pretty country.
Clouds of midges everywhere, swallows going crazy. This close to the mountains it’s hard to believe the lack of wind; lasted for about an hour, then the front that was going to dump 10" of snow started moving in.
Managed one nice 'bow and a few more that came loose, including a real pig that I hooked in the dorsal but shook off on the first jump; also donated pretty much my entire leech supply to the lake bottom. Wind came up, temps dropped into the 30’s and the water wasn’t much warmer so took a timeout for a tailgate party to revive circulation
Back at camp the next morning (we got about 3"). Lots of bugs coming off but still no surface takers.
Time for few days on something a bit more intimate. First time here; spent day one trying to figure out where the fish were holding. Managed to spook one and seriously deplete my nymph supply.
