The Ignorant Angler

I took a quick day trip to the Missouri earlier this week.  It was a glorious day.  Calm, bright, a toasty forty-seven when I got to Wolf Creek around eight in the morning.  A light sun hoody was all I would need.  Ok, pants too.
Blue winged olive nymphs and midge pupa were drifting in the current.  So, I started out sight nymphing.  A few nice fish were working the shallows.  The water was clear, the fish spooky.  No surprise.  I watched and waited, casting occasionally.  The fish took the pheasant tail, Rojo midge, a little red midge.  Its neat when you can see them eat.
I broke for a sandwich around two.  By then it was getting warm and was pretty bright.  My eyes needed a break from staring at the water.
After lunch it was time to do a little head hunting, so I went for a drive.
I found a few bank feeders.  It turned out that there were enough to keep me entertained for the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening.  Hatchwise, there were a few blue winged olive duns, but …

March, as I mentioned in an earlier post is a month of waiting.  Dry fly fishers wait for bugs.  We (ok, I) wait(ed) for nice weather.  Well, the first half of the month was pretty nice. The past couple of weeks, rather unsettled.   I had the opportunity to fish, or rather, endure, a variety of conditions.
I'd always wanted to fish during a snowstorm.  I did, and, let's just say that's an itch that I don't need to scratch again.  I don't care if the blue-winged olive hatch rivals the plague of the locusts. For the record, it didn't.  Even the olives had enough sense to stay in out of the snow.





Fishing in the rain?  Did that too.  Don't need to do that again either (unless I'm steelhead fishing in Alaska).   Lets just say that the novelty of being miserable wore off long ago.
So, on to fairer days.....






Today was a beauty.  It was dead calm when I arrived.  The sun had yet to hit the valley floor.  When it did, the wind kicked in.  Immediately.  Absolute…

Not too many bugs on the water yesterday.  A few clouds of Tricos midmorning.  Then, a brief sparse spinner fall brought fish to the surface in one run.  A half dozen fish cruised the run, lazily sucking in the tiny spinners.  On a quiet morning, you could hear the fish smacking their lips.  I just love the sound of a happily feeding fish.  They weren't easy though.  I continually reinforce the fact that fish in low clear water are exceptionally spooky.  The flash of a fly line is death. Make a cast and the fish stop feeding.  Guess what?  Game over.  Then the wait starts.  Maybe they'll come back and resume dining.  In a few minutes, or fifteen.   I got one real nice one, on of all things, a small parachute Adams. 
It was a great eat, followed by the usual anxious moments.  A small fly, attached to 6X, attached to a fish headed downstream, attached to an angler mired waist deep in midstream muck.  I wondered if the fish would stop.  Then, would I be able to get it back?  I d…