- Jay Walden
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The song remains the same. From a writer's perspective, one of the toughest things to accomplish is to take the same subject and make it sound interesting, again and again. That's especially true when the facts don't change. Good news is, everyone likes good news. If you've been reading this column for the past few weeks, then you already know the story—great dry fly fishing in the earlier part of the day with small midge imitations, then switch to BWO patterns, mid-day, when the baetis hatch starts, blah, blah, blah. If you fish here, or plan to, you might find the reporting a bit mundane, but as they say—you can't argue with results. As a writer, I just can't do it justice, the fishing is just that good right now, even more so, from a dry fly point of view. We've got great water conditions with super visibility and flows around 450 cfs. Combine that with great hatches that last the larger part of the day, and you've got the perfect storm for sight fishing to a target rich environment of rising fish. It's about as good as it gets. For this coming week, the weather looks like it will cooperate, with the exception of a good chance of rain on Tuesday and some wind that will last through Wednesday, other than that, we should have plenty of sunshine, but cooler temperatures. Based on my experience from last week, I would suggest that you move your banker's hours start time up a bit, and start looking for rising fish around 9:00, at least. When the weather was warmer and before we made the switch for daylight savings time, the good fishing stretched out a little longer in the evening, but lately I'm not seeing very many rising fish after the sun drops over the mesa around 4:00 pm, which is about time to get off the water anyway, since the temperature takes a dive with it. If you're still not sold on this dry fly thing and nymphing is your game, stick with black and olive pupae patterns earlier in the day and add some emerger patterns like ju-jus and crystal flash once you start seeing fish working higher in the water column. It will help if you move that strike indicator down and lighten up on the weight, to keep your flies in the upper water column, where the majority of the fish are feeding during the emerger activity. I have seen a few BWOs in some of the sections above Texas hole, but not really enough to have the interest of the fish yet. If you are in any part of the lower section of the river then you're going to want to have some baetis patterns. RS2s, Johnny flash, foamwings, and rootbeers would be my choices. For the dries, I just don't think you can top the fore and aft in 24 for the midges, and a cut-wing or olive comparadun in size 20 and 22 once the baetis hatch starts. I expect the river to fish well right up until we see the lake turn over, which is a totally temperature driven event, caused when the top layer of the lake gets colder and starts to sink, during an extended period of very cold weather. My advice is to get out here and fish as much as you can now, because once that happens it's a total game changer when this water clarity goes. If you would like to book a guided trip or need more info, give us a call at 505-632-2194.