We started another fly fishing road trip last week. We decided to fly fish the Owyhee River on the way to Fly Fishers International Fair in Boise, ID. Our arrival to the river was early evening and we checked out the river as we drove upstream. By the time we arrived, there weren’t too many people fishing.
It was a hot day, well into the upper 90’s, so our late arrival to the river was probably good. We decided to drive all the way to the dam and check out other fly fishers before settling on a place to fish. After finding a dirt road that lead to the river, I found a few rising fish in a pool.
I wasn’t looking forward to the high temperatures as I put my waders on, but found the cold river water refreshing. It seemed 10 degrees cooler in the water.
This is the water we decided to fish. It was a slow pool beneath a little riffle. There were rising fish in the slow-moving pool.
One of the benefits of starting our fishing a little late was the opportunity to see some beautiful scenery as we looked around. I’ll tell you I don’t always take time to enjoy the scenery. Seems like I focus on watching my fly and it takes all my attention.
There were a couple fly fishers above us in the riffle. Lucky for us, they had to leave. I looked where they had been fishing and found several rising fish. We decided to move upstream and began casting to them.
What we found were a few smaller rainbow trout. Even though they weren’t big, these fish were fat and feisty!
We caught several of these rainbow trout before observing a few rises along the far bank. A few casts later and a few beautiful brown trout came to the net.
The following morning, we rose early and drank a quick cup of coffee before walking down the bank to see if any fish were rising. There were!
The fish seemed to be in the same slots and rising to the same small yellow spinners.
We caught several brown trout and rainbows that morning, all with dry flies. Here is one of them.
We quit fishing after the fish stopped rising and decided to continue our journey to Boise. I planned to tie flies at the Fly Fishers International Fair on August 10 and 11. It was good to meet old friends who attended the show. I was able to watch a few of them tie flies and demonstrate a few of my own. I was tying Harrop’s CDC Ant, Galloup’s Ant Acid, and Arrick’s Ant.
I’ll be adding fly pattern sheets for the last two flies in the near future.
I hope to use these flies on the Madison River in a few days.
I’ll let you know how they worked.
Enjoy…go fish!
