Green Below Flaming Gorge Saturday-Sunday, May 1-2, 2021

Date / Time: 10-6 Saturday, 10-2 Sunday

Location: Fished Fontenelle day before with BK, then C Section on foot Saturday and Sunday. Pipeline takeout and up on Saturday, also uncle eddie’s and Taylor’s flat river left down to ranch.

The Characters: KK

Weather: Sunny, partly cloudy nice in the 60s-70s

Water Temp: 40 or so at dam gauge, probably mid 40s

Water Level: Low, 870 or so

Water Clarity/Quality: Clear

Moon Phase: Just before last quarter on Monday

Hatches: Flying ants, some BWOs

Best Flies: CDC black ant new version with zlon and black krystal dub #14

Fishing:

Saturday: Debated where to go since it was Saturday. I wanted to fish BWOs since a trip a few weeks previous had me fired up to do it again. Weather forecast was warm and sunny, not ideal BWOs. BK mentioned some ants had been around and I figured C section on foot was the call. Tied up some fresh ants and headed down around 10 arriving 10:30. Headed straight to pipeline since I figured that would be a spot unlikely to have boat traffic until later. Conditions were perfect when I got there and I fished up the bank and immediately saw ants on the water. Spotted a few risers and they ate it pretty readily. Broke off a couple since I still had 5x or possibly 6x leader from the BWOs which was dumb. I landed one or two, but decided to regroup and retie and start over with a nice fresh suppleflex 4x leader. After that it was game on, I worked up and stuck a few good ones then crossed. I fished up and stuck fish after fish in the skinny water. Killer slow mo eats and some big fish. Missed one of the very biggest but still landed a few low 20s or so. Good battles on a lot of them and some great looking fish. Some fish were rising a lot of the time the glare made it very difficult to spot though, so I fished blind a lot. Fish were in super shallow edges and short gridded out precision casting was the ticket.

Fished my way up to the sidechannel, then tied on a streamer think it was a leech since the clouds came in and it looked so good. After 20 mins or so of nothing on the drops and structure, I crossed, took that off and went back to the ant. Stuck a few more on the way down the left bank and boats started to show so I headed to the truck. By then it was almost 3. Stopped at uncle eddies on way back up and fished along the canal diversion. Saw a few sporadic risers in the slow water, but nothing major. Got a real nice one on the edge of the fast water and then worked through the slow drop back from the bank. Got a few more real good ones along the slow inside water and on the drop. A few boats came through, but none really knew what was going on.

After fishing through there, decided to fish opposite taylor’s and down. Didn’t find much on the upper end, but then got a good one or two near the cattle gate way down. Don’t recall many others and it was getting to be dinner time after a slayfest so I headed out around 6. Epic Day!