Hammering Fish in the Canyon

After a few slow days of guiding on the upper South Fork late this week, I took advantage of a day off today and floated the South Fork canyon with good friend Stan Czarniak. We put on at Conant and decided to run the motor all the way down to Cottonwood, a good hour of motoring. Since the morning was very cool, and most of the reports of any hatches were coming from the lower canyon, we thought it would be good to fish the bottom half of the float to Byington. It was a good decision. As soon as we started fishing at about 10:30 and under full cloud cover, the fishing absolutely popped. The nymphing and streamer fishing was hot right out of the gate. Kyle's beadhead sally nymph, pats stonefly nymph and the kreelex streamer knocked them dead! By about 1:00, the salmonflies began swarming, followed by gray drakes in the riffles, and the fishing really came uncorked...big fish up on dries in the riffles and on the banks. It was a very memorable day in the canyon. We moved fish all the way to Byington on a size 6 red Amy's Ant with a gray drake trailer. Fishing should be great all week as the bugs move up river. Here are a couple of photos from the day...a healthy male brown that fell for my Amy's Ant, and a very fat hen that absolutely hammered Stan's Amy's Ant. More soon!