Wyoming Rainbows VideoHi Speed Only

This weekend I met up with Kray, who you all know as a regular contributor to fliesandfins.com, and his family. Before I say any more I have to tell everyone what a pleasure it was to meet all of them. They are a lot of fun and excellent ambassadors for the state of Wyoming. We camped and fished a fairly large river near Casper and big rivers mean big fish. However, on this trip it did not also mean big flies. We woke up early, as in before day light, in temperatures that hovered in the mid-teens, and struggled with frozen fingers to thread 4x and 5x tipped through the eyes of tiny size twenty to twenty-four midge patterns. But the cold was soon forgotten when I hooked my first fish and he broke my net! As a matter of fact we all hooked big fish and had a great time.

These fish normally hit streamers but the winter cold had turned their attention to easier pray. The interesting thing is that their need to chase their quarry was not diminished. Almost every fish we caught was at the tail of the drift just as the nymph rose off the bottom. It makes sense that these big Rainbows would chase midges up through the water column as they twitched their way to the surface, but they also took Scuds in the same manner. Which are traditionally fished only on a dead-drift. Movement was the key but even then the hits were unusually subtle. Just a twitch of the indicator, a quick hook set and it was off to the races. Kray and I both got to see our backing a couple times, which is always a nice feeling.