Good times

Delightful afternoon and evening fly fishing with Captain Don on the Mighty MO.  Fortunately, the Mighty part of MO has abated; we now are finally back to mean and median river flows.  Soft hackles, smaller streamers, and crayfish patterns caught the fancy of smaller trout through the afternoon, with the larger fish responding #16 Caddis pupa (Thank you, Jay!) fished as a dropper off caddis dries. Viagra caddis, and, of course, sucker egg patterns also produced.  Best fish of the night came on a first cast rise to a grey drake but after bringing the fish near the boat twice, the third time spelled freedom as the hook pulled out when I lifted the fish for Don to net.  Although Don laughed off my estimate of 25″ (and, of course, it wasn’t 25), he conceded that judging by the size of the head, it was a very good fish, probably in the 15-20″ inch range.

Pictured is Don with a beautifully marked brown, a sucker spawn-packed bow that I’m holding, and what surely must appear a most puzzling shot of what seems to be nothing! The brown exemplifies the quality of our fishery (not to mention Captain Don’s stellar artistry with the long rod!), and the rainbow reflects how fishing can slow late in the sucker spawn “hatch.”  Why some of these fish are even remotely interested in more food defies understanding.  Extract your fly and out pours spawn; they are absolutely jam-packed with eggs.  That said, the sky shot to the keenest of eyes and sharpest of computer monitors, reveals the heavy grey drake hatch we witnessed.  Some fish rose, but the rises were intermittent with our moving on when a fish would cease regularly rising.  Dry fly fishing will continue to improve as the suckers finish their chores and the food of choice increasingly becomes the rich insect population of the Muskegon.

Captain Tom Kuieck