Fishing the South Fork

I fished the South Fork from the dam to Spring Creek yesterday with Sean Doyle.  It has been hot the last couple of days and we had heard the stone flies might be migrating up the river.  It seems the heat produced a fantastic PMD hatch in the riffles during the late afternoon, but we didn't see much evidence at all of a prolific stone fly population.

We put on the river at 3:30pm and beat the bank with big hairy attractors for a few miles with no luck.  Finally we came across a pod of rising fish at the tail end of a riffle feeding on PMD's.  A quick change of flies produced some success.  With more river miles to go, we took off in search of more riffles, PMD's and rising fish.

We beat the bank between riffles with no luck.  By the time we got the to the next good looking riffle, the hatch had turned off and there was no rising fish in sight.  It seems the hatch ended around 4:30 or 5.

Sean put on a big parachute adams for the last stretch from the braided section just above the falls to the take out.  He was able to turn a few on the grassy side of the river along the highway at sunset.  We took off around 9pm.

The "ladies"and kids had a collective dinner at the Doyles.  Nancy and the kids rode their bikes.  Coming home in the dark, Sean had just dropped me off and ran into them on the road.  So, Maggie rang her bell all the way down the lane to announce that she was coming so I would know.