April has been quite the thrill with weather. After our freezing winter like beginning we had some summerish 80 degree weather last week followed by another dose of freezing weather this week. All of our western freestone rivers responded to the heat with a big push of water and the fishing was put off for a few days. The rivers have all dropped back into shape now and it’s back to business as usual, but we had to bail out to the Missouri for a couple days for better fishing. And better fishing it was.
A nice brown from the Missouri
This is nothing new. It seems like every April we have a push of water that will send us over to the Missouri for a few days. Lucky for us the Missouri isn’t too far and the fishing is usually good in the spring. The only problem is that once you take clients to the Mo and they see the size and quantity of fish you can put in the boat in a day, they never want to go anywhere else.
Lots of healthy, hard fighting, chrome rainbows around.
It was odd to see so many rainbows around. We caught a ton of nice bows so they are either done spawning and back to the river, or they have been spawning in river this year. Either way it seems like more than usual for this time of year.
I stayed an extra day and did a little streamer fishing on the lower river as well. We caught a few nice fish on streamers and found a few fish willing to eat March brown dry flies too. Sure nice to throw a size 12 parachute on the Mo.
Streamer brown from the down low.
I’ll be back in the shop this week putting away all the new bugs we just got in. We have some nice new hoppers, and foamies to check out. Also, we just picked up Ross reels so they should be here soon.