Missouri River - Warmer and Sunnier

This weekend Peter, Billy and I did a re-do of the Missouri and boy was our persistence rewarded!

It was incredible! The Missouri River is a tailwater, which means it has LOTS of fish and BIG ones. The water temps stay pretty consistent which means the fish feed nearly year round and are very happy and prolific.

We spent Sunday looking for the bugs to come off, but no luck, so we did some nymphing and streamer fishing... Great day. We caught some great fish and had some incredible scenery as we floated through the canyons and it even warmed up a bit that day . . . No multi layers like last weekend (burr).

We car camped at the Pelican campground, had a great dinner, enjoyed the nice 60 degree weather and slept like babies with the 3 dogs in our truck. Billy had Foxy to keep him company (dog not girl).

Monday morning we floated right from our campground and the dry fly action started! CADDIS came off in teh perfect amount and all we did was see fish rising along the banks, in teh middle of the river, EVERYWHERE! We were catching so many fish that we became completely spoiled and decided to only hunt the BIG ones... Now, a 16-18 in brown trout or rainbow trout is a nice fish most days - NOT TODAY. That day, we only wanted those 22in and above. We could see them creating whirlpools of water along the banks and just sucking down bugs on the top of the water.

We were like giddy school kids all day. Each of us caught some incredible fish from the boat and wading -- All on drys.

It was easily my favorite day of fishing - ever. But even Billy and Peter who have done this every summer /spring day of their lives for 12 years said it was their best day of dry-fly fishing ever. Big words for big fish.

We were so grateful the entire weekend. We had 3 people and 4 dogs in a boat, caughts some incredible fish, had great weather, amazing friendships... It was a good day. Check out our pics... you can see the rest at our picasa web album

May 2008 - Missouri River

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