Bitterroot River Skwala Hatch 4-8-2015

Fishing with John Stewart from Ennis again today.  The night time temps did not dip as low today as they have been in the past days.  This kept the water temps slightly raised from what we have been seeing and produced good action right from the put in.  We caught our first fish within sight of the put in.  We also caught a dandy westslope on a dropper nymph in the first 10 minutes of being on the water.

The fish were eating the same stuff they have the past few days. A dry skwala with a small size 10 rubber leg in tan dropped about 2 feet below. In the morning about 1/3 of the fish were on the dry and the remaining were on the dropper.  We expected a good hatch of may fly’s like the past few days after lunch but it never materialized.  A cold north wind started blowing and kept the hatching mayfly’s home for the day. Not a Madison River type wind by any means but enough to ruin our may fly hatch.   But, it did get the fish looking up and they stared taking notice of the skwalas floating around for the daily meal.

The fishing was really good till about 4:30 and then the shadows stared to form on the water as the sun set behind the towering Bitterroot Range.   After this time the fishing substantially slowed till the take out.

All in all it was a good day of fishing with over 40 dry fly fish to net.  John has fished with me now for 4 years during the skwala hatch and we both agree that this is the best fishing he has seen.

I have one more day of guiding before a break and the weather is supposed to remain constant.  Hopefully with out the north wind we had today.