Weekend on the 'Root'!

Saturday

Cody, Chris and I headed to the upper Bitterroot today to nymph up some cutties. The temps were warm and we experienced some trouty (and suckery) success! When we arrived at the access we watched a kid kicking around some rocks and collecting bugs to fish with for whitefish. In about two minutes the kid brought back about 50 skwala stonefly nymphs.  It was a good indicator to us what the fish would be feeding on.

In the first run of the day I landed four fish, two of which were cutties and the other two were UGLY. The action was quick!

The Sucker pose

After fishing a couple runs, Cody and I went upstream and found multiple consistently rising fish. Cody tied on a midge and gave it a go. First cast...."Boom goes the dynamite."

He switched over to nymphs and we shared the run for the next hour and a half. The run was stacked with fish and we landed over 10 including two doubles! The big loss of the day was the brown that I hooked. I thought it was just a big sucker. However, when the golden brown slab launched itself a couple feet out of the water, Cody and I both said "wow that's a nice fish". The fish even had a well developed kype. The jump is where the fish threw the fly. It was a tough loss.

We stayed until the fish stopped feeding. The last fish of the run was a nice cutty that I landed.

Pics by Cody

Overall it was a great afternoon with plenty of fish. We did see some bugs flying around, but they were primarily little stones and midges of course.

Sunday

Sunday was going to be warm. Very warm. The three of us headed south in the Bitterroot Valley for day 2 on the Root! The plan was to meet up with Bob (who we met and fished with on the Mo a few weeks ago). Bob, who lives in Stevensville, was prepared to show us some great water and hopefully some great fish. We park one car a few miles downstream of an access and then spent the day walking and fishing the stretch.

Bob started hitting fish real early, including a 17 inch cuttbow, while Cody and I had a slower start. Eventually Cody and I started hitting fish. The whitefish were out in numbers, but we found some trout too.

Bob reaching for the catch.

Streamers really produced well later in the day and I think that all 5 of my trout came on streamers. I don't think we could have asked for a nicer day to fish. Temps were in the upper 50's! There were actually many times during our fishing where I debated fishing shirtless because it really was hot out.  Not too many rising fish, but I did see a few adult skwalas. It won't take long for all of the skwalas to come out if the weather stays like this.

We all had a great time this weekend on the Root and we hope that you got out to fish in this beautiful weather also! If you didn't, you are either very busy or very dumb. Have a good week and stay tuned for any reports! Hopefully I'll get out at some point tomorrow.