Fall is Here

Fall is approaching fast. Temps here in Missoula have been pretty cold at night and the forecast says that for the next couple days it could drop almost to freezing at night. The chilly nights have definitely had an effect on the fish and hatches also. I headed out on the Clark Fork today around 1:30 and found that it was pretty windy and overcast. I expected to see some hatches going on and plenty of fish rising but there wasn't much going on. I found 2 rising fish on a calmer stretch where the wind wasn't as crazy. I managed to land 1 cutthroat which crushed my adams parachute.

After that I decided to nymph a deep run in hopes of hooking up with trout, not whitefish. My hopes didn't come true so I headed upstream where I picked up a small bow nymphing. I went upstream even further and found an awesome looking riffle/run that looked perfect to nymph. I did and landed 1 whitefish right off the bat. Then I made the decision to switch to a streamer. The deep run looked perfect for it and I thought I'd rather fish streamers than catching a bunch more whitefish and probably no trout. I didn't have a sink tip but a split shot did the job. On the first cast on the second strip of the fly a fish smacked it. It was a hard take and it felt great to get a fish to hit that hard. It was a nice brown of about 14 inches.

With that fish I officially declare it Autumn. Now I'll be focusing more on streamers than dries. The hatches are somewhat dying down and fish are going into the prespawn stage very soon. I'm very excited for the coming weeks of fishing.