The weather was simply amazing. A bit breezy at times, which kept the temperature down as well as the bugs.
The Golden Road is holding up well. It appears they are grading but the traffic is still light, and fishing pressure has been low. That will change in the next week. Boats were showing up all weekend long and the East Outlet has dropped to 1200cfs. The pro’s can still get a drift boat down the Sluice, but we may see some of the East Outlet guides on the West Branch early this summer.
So how was the fishing? Pretty good. We caught a few nice brookies and small salmon in the morning. There was very little surface fly activity so we stuck with the black stonefly nymph set-ups. Why mess with what’s producing.
At about 10:30am, Brookfield cut flow dramatically leaving a large ring around Big Eddy, and exposed rocks where you should be able to float a boat. By 11:00am the water was back to normal, but the fish were not. Oftentimes dramatic changes in flow can disrupt the fish and it takes them some time to settle back into their feeding patterns. So, we took a break for lunch and then headed down stream.
I’m not going to lie, the mid day fishing was hard. We caught a couple more small brookies but it was difficult to maintain focus with long breaks between action.
Around 3pm we dropped into our last pool of the day and thankfully, there were some small fish rising. Time to cast some surface flies. It rigged a small caddis (size 14-16) with an emerger trailer and a white wulff with a light hendrickson wet trailer. All 4 flies saw some action. The fish were tentative, often following a fly for a period before taking or sometimes just slapping at it.
They boys from Old Town fished hard and worked well with techniques they were learning on the fly.
As of last weekend, I’m still not seeing many salmon in the river, but there are plenty of brookies to keep us entertained. Hopefully the Salmon will be arriving soon.
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