071214

Few things surprise me more than a good day on the Upper Madison. Today was one of those good days up there, maybe my best day there in a couple of years? Got lots of fish until about 2:30 or so, but we were more interested in getting off the river before the thundershowers hit. One of the guys fished an olive McCune's with a Little Green Machine all day, while I messed with the other guys rig a bunch until finally giving into the idea that they could both fish the same flies and life would be alright. I'm not sure if it was the approaching storm, general fatigue, water temperatures and bug activity, or the fact that we had no more Olive McCunes, but it shutdown for us about 2:30-3:00 and all of those things were going on. Up until then, we were getting fish out of fishy water, next to Boulders, along the banks, and pretty much everywhere except random, skinny mid-river gravel bars. I had intentions of fishing dries, but just couldn't leave that sculpin alone.