Upper Green Above Fontenelle Saturday, September 22, 2018

Date / Time: Saturday, September 22nd 2018 9-5 Location: Green above Fontenelle 318 bridge to reservoir The Characters: KK & BK Weather: Sunny 80s, cooler in the am. Breezy in afternoon, not outrageous. Water Temp: Didn’t measure, low to mid 50s on gauge Water Level: 480 cfs Water Clarity/Quality: Largely crystal. Moon Phase: 2 days before full moon Hatches: Callibaetis spinners Best Flies: White & Gold articulated, Rainbow trout articulated streamer and black dungeon Fishing:  Headed u to meet Brian and fish above the reservoir hoping to encounter migrating browns and/or kokanee. Water was low, but it seemed doable and I have been wanting to fish that section for years. Arrived and it definitely looked low. I drove to LaBarge where we were going to put in and waited for BK. We looked at it and it appeared pretty slow and lakey. We drove down to 318 to look at river and decided to do a short float just to check it out since we were there. We put the boat in on the east side of the river where there isn’t really a ramp, but a bank that you can slide the boat down. We were on a streamer throwing mission with the intention of finding a big brown so stuck to that plan. I saw a few kokanee jumping under the bridge right at the launch so hopes were improved. Had a follow on the streamer right off and I believe a grab. We spotted a big fish in the shallow tailout of the first pool and ended up seeing several good fish in this type of water but never managed to get any of these. Probably should have thrown the hopper in retrospect. We ended up sticking fish fairly soon after launch on the white and gold articulated. Medium sized fish and some smaller ones, but no big ones initially. Brian eventually got a pretty decent 16 or so. We stuck bows, browns and cutties. Toward the end of the first float, I stuck a pretty big bow and lost it. Action was pretty steady and we hit fish in all likely looking spots, mostly drops, deep holes, bushes and undercuts. We had shuttled to names hill and the sidechannel where the ramp is was a trickle, so we had to get out of the boat and push through a few spots. Without the skiff, this would have been a tough takeout. Since it was good, we decided to float into the lake if we could find a takeout. I knew of some gates that said “Please close gate” but nothing else so we found one that allowed us to get to the water and figured a reasonable enough takeout. Since there isn’t a ton of water between the channel at names hill and there, we dragged the boat back up through the sidechannel which wasn’t too bad. We continued to stick fish and got a few more bigger ones especially as we got into the lower couple of holes above the reservoir. All of this water was killer with very deep bouldery water scoured from early season high flows. Shallow riffles in between but largely able to hit minimally in the skiff. In the last few pools switched to black and got the last several fish on that. The last stretch was silted up from banks collapsing in the lake bed and half of the river was heavily clouded. I had one last large fish follow from the clear into the cloudy and not commit. Had to pull the boat up the bank. Ultimately a super fun float and never saw another person on a beautiful day in September