A beautiful afternoon on the Clark Fork (2/5)

It was too beautiful of a day to pass up fishing yesterday with temps in the upper 30's and mostly sunny skies. Riley and I headed over to an access that I fish a lot on the Clark Fork. I was expecting the fish to be pretty active and I was hoping I'd get into a decent sized one. And that's exactly what happened.....After fishing a pool near the access site, I headed downstream to my pool that I always fish. It didn't take long before I was hooked up in the same place where I usually hook up with fish. I was nymphing deep and I set the hook perfectly on the fish. The fish was heavy and as I forced it up through the water column, I could see it was a decent one. I played the fish carefully due to the many sticks that were right in front of me. The fish was a pretty strong one and it actually took some effort with the 6wt. Hydros to try and bring the fish to the shallows. I was very happy with how the rod preformed. I finally got the fish in close and I was stunned at how fat the fish was. It was a beautiful, healthy cuttbow with nice pink fins and a big pink stripe. I snapped a few pics and released the fish back the pool.

The san juan worm had produced again. I nymphed the pool all over again and managed one brown of about 12 inches. I hooked the fish nymphing very deep in the pool. After nymphing the second time through, I switched to streamers, hoping I could entice another nice fish. Instead my streamer was hit by a tiny little brown. It was funny to see such a small fish hitting a good sized streamer.

After fishing the rest of the run with no strikes, I headed back up to meet Riley. It was a great few hours on the water. While Riley and I were out, Chris had been fishing the Bitterroot. He managed to land 3 browns, the biggest being about 15 inches, all on streamers. I was glad to hear that he had a successful afternoon. The weather for tomorrow is looking pretty nice so I'll probably be out somewhere. As for this weekend, we might be headed back to the Missouri for a third strait weekend! Are we crazy? Maybe....