South Fork 8-12-17

Finally riffle fishing is nearing the good category! PMDs and pink alberts are emerging  from these. Emergences  of both are overlapping a bit more than usual  because of high water earlier this summer.   So choosing the best pattern at a given time is interesting. Fishing back to the banks seems to be lagging a bit even though terrestrial insect population is excellent, so look for future improvement.  Be sure to keep rubber leg patterns in that fly box because although not significant mutant golden stone flies are yet to appear, their nymphs are migrating. Right now flow out of Palisades Dam is about 9000 cfs and about the same at Heise.  That’s just about where the flow should be historically.

One thing to consider is that the lengthy time of high water coming from the dam has changed local bottom structure in the river below.  In places riffles have moved downstream, some have become runs, some holes have deepened while others have filled in, and so on. For sure the fish are still in the river, but favored locations are not always in the same places as last season. Now the fun will be to figure out where the best new locations for fishing are.