Halloween On The Arki 31Oct14

Daryle and I stole a Friday and hit the Arki "one last time" this fall in Big Horn Sheep Canyon. It was a gorgeous crisp fall day and we arrived ~10:15am at Pinnacle Rock (after discussing results of my knee MRI with the doc). I was immediately into fish at the east end of runs there as I caught the final moments of the morning midge emergence - my red-headed black silver wire flash emerger was working. I then crossed to the far bank and fishing slowed but I still caught smallish fish on black midges, an RS2 and the best fish on "the weight," a tung BH pheasant wire wrap thing I do in fall colors. Fishing was not awesome... we saw redds but no breeding; we saw midges but no BWOs or hoppers; we saw no dry fly action; water was clear but still  >400cfs and a challenge to wade and fish IMO. DD hooked one in the afternoon at Lone Pine and I did nadda... 'tis better to have hooked and lost than never to have hooked at all. Still, it was great to be out there.

Fall High Flows On The PT 15Oct14

On a respite from big days at Fluke Networks I took out of Nature Center on the PT. I'm an honest visitor there now with an annual sticker. Morning was kind of slow with the flows up to 600cfs and the water super clouded from rains I guess. Caught some in the morning on a small rainbow warrior. I moved to Valco for lunch and the PM. Caught more there as the day warned then became overcast. Saw plenty of caddis and a nice creamy green smallish caddis nymph (looked like a GR hare's ear kindof) did well as did other bugs in the lineup including silver surfer and red beadheaded black body silver wire midge emerger. I caught a high number of lipless fish strangely. The AM hatch of midges was prolific but in the manky viz they didn't see the fly well I think, therefore I used silver.