Catching Up

The last couple or few months has seemed like a whirlwind. We spend all winter waiting and waiting for the season to get here, then it's here and we have no idea how the hell we got here so quick. I think that I'm over my mid-season burn out, thanks to a couple of days off to get caught up and see the family a bit.

Hopper fishing on the Yellowstone has gotten pretty consistent over the last 4-5 days. The key is to be persistent and somedays they eat 'em all day long, others it's here and there. Patterns in light tans and yellow have been the best for me. Also, I think it helps if you can not be the bazillionth boat coming down a stretch of river.

I ended last week with two days on the Bighorn. The surprise (especially given my luck this year) was that there were hardly any weeds over there at all. Crazy I tell ya. I stuck to the lower river as there were 2 Bazillion boats form afterbay to Bighorn. I guess the whole things is fishing really well though. I had to play around with bugs quite a bit as it seemed like we'd get 'em on something for an hour or two, have a little dry spell, switch it up, get 'em again. Squirmy worms, Little Green Machines, PMD Wondernymph, Cream Sparkle Pupa, and some fish on sowbugs too. Better dry fly fishing up higher I believe. The word is that afterbay to 3-mile is very weedy though and things should be getting sloppy over there in the next week -10 days if the heat stays up there.

One funny thing that happened is that I got check by the Dept of Agriculture for invasive aquatic species at the rest area in between Hardin and Billings. Funny as I was slightly ranting about this in my last post. I asked them if they've ever found anything during their inspections...they said no. Seemed like a good use of govt. money though. I got a nice flyer and a little inspection sheet saying that I'm clean! Not sure what they actually did though as there were 3 of them and they all seemed to be talking to me while filling out my inspection sheet. I'm not making light of the severity of the implications of aquatic nuisance species but rather the way that those in charge go about handling it.