Green Below Fontenelle May 25, 2015

Date / Time: Monday, May 25, 2015 Location: Green Below Fontenelle. First mile below dam. The Characters: KK solo Weather: Partly cloudy, with spots of sun, one rain storm hit for an hour. 50s Water Temp: Guessing around 50 Water Level: 1900 cfs Water Clarity/Quality: Crystal Moon Phase: first quarter Hatches: BWOs and midges Best Flies: BWO emerger, cased caddis nymph, zebra midges, BWO beadhead barr, olive tail gold lead eye bugger Fishing: Day two of 2 day trip after driving up from Altamont day before. Weather was clearing and much nicer with super warm and sunny morning with clouds in and out. Started out throwing streamers a few casts by dam for nada and then down main channel below meadow camp and then in car body channel. Got one medium sized bow in main channel, missed another and maybe one other eat after an hour or so of covering all the water. At bottom of car body channel, switched to the shallow palsa rig nymph on 4 weight in my pack. Ran big red disco zebra, 16 camel and copper bead barr. Immediately got nice bow on copper barr, then hooked a bunch of whities. Moved up and hooked a few others that got off and then crossed and fished from the far side. Switched things up and tried a black beadhead cased caddis above the Barr. Stuck several nice bows in the drops above the car, one was pushing 20, all killer battlers and nice fish. Most actually were eating the caddis. Worked my way up and got another big bow and nice brown in main channel on caddis. Crossed and got one more crossing and another on way up. After good fish fix morning decided to go look for risers. There was a Sage One 6 weight that I had seen laying in the grass by the river the day before and I had left it there figuring somebody would come back. Several boats passed and two rigs drove down but nobody picked it up so I did, going to try and find owner will see. Walked up to truck in meadow and two boxes floated down. Saw a guy in a kayak that had crossed and figured they were his, so drove up above and walked down to him to give boxes back which I did. I wanted to check that water anyway since evening before spooked a bunch of fish out of the shallows on way back to truck. This spot has been good to me for past few seasons on dries in higher water like this. It’s fun water, super shallow and non-descript. Sure enough fish were sporadically up and some nice ones. Missed two and landed one that ripped me up good. After that, thunder here and there and wind pushed me off. Went back and had lunch and debated leaving as rain kicked back in. Stuck around for an hour and it moved through. Went back and fish were sporadically up and gradually started going off. Stuck many, many good fish. They were ridiculously ripping hot especially getting them in that shallow water. Kept losing them, some after long battles, some after hooking them but eventually started landing them. They were somewhat picky and my best fly for them was a no hackle two toned emerger with a shuck and a snowshoe rabbit post, size 18 2499 sp-bl. Eventually worked all the way down from the outside and back up from inside. At one point they were rising all the way down inside and out. Got them on a few different patterns as well, parachute, snowshoe comparadun. Got one nice cutty and a brown, but mostly bows and all rippers. Killer ending to a fun, but wet couple of days.