042713

It seemed pretty windy today as I was holed up in my back office working on guide trip invoices for the year...that's a subtle reminder to book your trip for 2013 soon. Anyway, the walls were rattling, roof shaking, and still folks were coming in the shop picking up bugs for the river. Brave souls.

Crawdads always seem to be the go to fly on the lower Madison and it's been that way for a long time now. Sure, there are a lot of other standard bugs out there and who really knows if they think its a stonefly nymph, dead sculpin or crawdad. We call it a crawdad, it looks like a crawdad, so we assume they eat it as a crawdad. That makes one wonder why do they like crawdads so much on the lower? Sure there are a lot them, but they seem pretty common throughout much of the region's waters. Yet, we fish it more on the lower than anywhere else...consistently...and it always seems to get fish.

I've spent hours upon hour of days upon days wondering about why those fish eat crayfish so much. Of all the crayfish patterns out there, why is it that the Clouser always seems to be the best? Is it the gray underbelly...the rest of the fly looks pretty lame in our eyes. The little pheasant fibers are stupid, the turkey back falls apart and the fly just waggles around very unlike a real crawdad. Embrace the cray, the fish eat it is all I have to say.