Howard on the River

Howard and I have been fishing together for several years. We have caught our largest fish on dries, mostly in the Summer, and we have put the numbers in the boat with the nymph. We had a plan to go for the bigger fish on top. The second part of the plan was to fish nymphs when we needed a numbers fix.

It was time to push off and before we knew it we were floating. During the initial part of the float all rods, five in total, were rigged with a different fly pattern. Everything from top water to deep water nymphing was represented. We started on nymphs and the fished responded. Howard was dialed in with his casting better than I had ever seen him before and was getting some good drifts. We fished structure hard and the fish would come off that structure when the fly drifted by just right.

Then we went to the dry. We were hunting for feeding fish and Howard had a great choice of flies. We found a fish feeding hard and moved the boat into position. Howard tossed the fly a foot off the bank and it drifted about a rod length and nothing happened. We went back to the well and Howard stuck the fly right where the fish was feeding. The bruiser came up and ate almost immediately and Howard stuck it. Then the fly let go and we lost the fish. But, the whole experience pumped me up.

We fished along and went to the dry/dropper. The dry began attracting some fish although usually we would get the fish on the dropper which was normally a midge. The Blue Poison Tung was the leading midge of the day. This pattern has been in my box since my plane ride home from Denver a few weeks back. I have done a little tuning on the fly but straight off the shelf works too. 

We kept at it and kept-after that big fish and got into several pods of fish catching our share. The terrestrial/dropper combo worked well, but I think our biggest number producer other than the straight nymph, was the dry/dropper midge on the Orvis Superfine Glass rod. This combo is easy to like for sure. We had a long day on the river, got to the takeout late and we were both a bit tired. I have never seen Howard cast so much as we moved the different flies along the river. We didn't bag that big one and get him into the 20+ Club again, but we boated our share of fish and could have got even bigger numbers if we would have stayed on nymphs all day. We left the river and talked about the next time before he started back home.

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