Summer Half-Day Guided Trips

While we still expect water temps to exceed 68 degrees along a majority of the river this week, the ambient temps have already helped a good bit to cool things down. The section that will hold the best temps will be in the canyon, I.E. Hirschdale to the Nevada state line. If fishing upstream of the Boca confluence or in Nevada, continue to focus on the morning hours and carry a thermometer with you. When fishing the canyon this week, we noticed a steep dropoff in fish activity in the afternoon despite the cooler temps that day, so it’s still safe to say the fishing is best in the mornings despite the water temps allowing us to fish later into the day. As we head into late summer, the hatches wane and the bugs get smaller. There are still a good number of green caddis in a size 16, and few PMDs moving around, but the biggest change has been the increase in BWOs and midges. Consider mixing the good ol’ Zebra Midge back into your repertoire as well as some small olive mayfly patterns such as Micro Mays. There have also been a large number of nocturnal stonefly shucks on the rocks, and we are having good success on a size 4-6 brown stonefly, such as the Rocksteady Stone. A good number of fish were also caught on Arnot’s Simple Sculpin, T.J. Hookers and Mud Bugs using tight line tactics this week as well. While the jig streamer bite has picked up this week, we are probably still a few weeks away from the swung streamer fishing, or trout spey, getting good. This will become a viable method once we begin to see the browns slink back into the riffles as they gear up for spawn.