Green Below Fontenelle Sat-Mon July 17-20, 2020

Date / Time: Saturday, Sunday, Monday all day.

Location: Camped at Slate, fished mostly above Slate, but a bit below down to riffles above Skunk camp. Wade fished a lot to focus on pods.

The Characters: KK, BK

Weather: Sunny and mostly clear. Windy in afternoons. Saturday windy most of the day

Water Temp: mid to high 60s 64-66 out of dam

Water Level: Around 1,700 cfs.

Water Clarity/Quality: Very clear especially up high

Moon Phase: New Moon Monday

Hatches: BWOs, midges

Best Flies: Cinnamon caddis 14-16

Fishing: Another report a few weeks late.

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  First fish above Slate bridge

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  BK’s Weeping Rock bow

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July 18: Drove in this morning arriving around 9, unpacked into BK’s trailer where I was staying. Drove over Slate and saw sippers along the edge so geared up and headed there. Had been up the previous week and water had dropped and had looked back and realized we should have waded more, so determined to do that. Brian had been up all week since he was laid off. He had been fishing caddis and said they were on it good, so went with that. Fished up the edge and put the first few down, as I was working one at the top one below came back. Made a few casts with the caddis, he sipped it, I stuck the fish and it went ballistic ripping out into the middle almost running into a pontoon boat fisherman on the surface. After a killer back and forth battle finally landed it, great start to the trip! We went down and checked out the first corner and saw a fish working and then a group of kayakakers ran it over. We headed upriver and don’t remember where at first, but ultimately launched the boat and did the weeping rock edge and they were up good. I stuck a killer looking brown not too big but beautiful and BK got a pig bow.

Brief summary for now and then if I get time later, I’ll elaborate. Kick ass caddis throughout the day. There were sporadic pmds around, tricos spinnerfall in the am not super dense yet and sallies around. Fish were seeking out caddis though throughout the day. Started with a pig above the slate creek bridge after walking up and spooking a few, one started coming up again below me and I got the eat take and into my backing with a battle royale. Ended up being the them for the trip. Had a lot of misses. Mornings were solid starting around 9-10 as the spinnerfall started and fish were up throughout the day after. Later in the day, it was mostly a game of up along the Weeping rock edge and down to the flat above car body with the cooler water. It was going off all along there though. It was also deserted with very few people fishing, we had evenings completely to ourselves without another angler in site it was awesome! Got multiple pig ridiculosly hot and super fat bows in the 17-20” range. I never landed much over the low 20s. There were some giants up though. Water was unusually high for this late since they never did a flush and got a big rain storm later keeping levels up. This made for super hot fish and difficult to land fish. Multiple into the backing well into it. I’ll try to give more detail later, but if not it was all about the cinnamon body caddis with BK’s dubbing color. Size 14-16 on 4x. Hardly fished anything else.