Dry Fly Innovations

We were on the river at 11:30 in the morning.  It was a gorgeous day, warm in the low 40’s and no wind.  I’d gone early so my partner, Mudd our lab puppy could spend some river time before the hatch, but as we were driving by a big slick above Cow Creek there were rainbows feeding on a slick.  So Mudd jumped in the kennel and I started sneaking in on the feeding fish.

It was a near perfect set up, the fish were feeding out from and below a big brush pile on the bank and if I could get to the brush pile without scaring the fish I’d be completely hidden.  I very gently moved into position and the fish continued to feed.  I made it and the fish were still there.

I watched the group of fish for a few minutes and noticed a large rainbow about 3 fish in and in the lead, he was in perfect position.  I made a nice soft cast about 2 feet above the fish and let the #22 BWO No Hackle (dry fly fish Idaho) float naturally to the fish.  There was no hesitation, he slowly surfaced and sipped the fly.  A gentle hook set, and the fish roars out to deep water and jumps; then runs down river like a bolt of lightning.  After a royal thrashing up down the hole a big beautiful rainbow lay quietly in the net.  Awesome!!  After removing the hook I revived him and admired him for a long time; then watched as he slowly turned away.  I absolutely love winter fishing!!

Turning back to the river, there were no fish feeding anywhere in casting distance as in the case almost every time you hook and land a fish on a slick, the other fish all went down.  No problem, I simply hung out behind my brush pile and waited.  Just like clock work in about 5 minutes the fish began surfacing again and I selected another rainbow to serve the fly.

For 3 hours I hooked big rainbows on a combination of flies.  The BWO No Hackle #22 started strong, almost every fish that I could get positioned on was hooked, but the hatch changed and the fish began working just under the surface.  Emerger (dry fly fish Idaho) time, so I change over to our BWO Emerger #22 3XLong (dry fly fish Idaho) and bang the fishing was on again.  A dead drift method into feeding troughs worked really well to start with and a little later swinging the fly through fish zones worked really well.

Later in the day after I had exhausted the slick I moved down river to a favorite riffle below Cow Creek and tied on an adult upright wing BWO.  I was able to land a few more fish there.  All in all it was a pretty good winter fishing day.  I ended up landing 16 gorgeous rainbows and lost quite a few also.

Shown below are the South Fork Arsenal of BWO: