In Front Of The Front

Today it was almost sixty degrees by the time Miss Carol and I got to the river Blue. On the way down we both noticed how wet the trail was, like it had rained but it hadn't. Heavy dew was glistening on the prairie grass making a shining like carpet out of the grasses. The "arctic express" was still somewhere in the upper plains headed south toward the prairie ocean and expected to arrive early on Sunday.

Now, the old salts of the river tell us to always fish in front of a front because this promises excellent fishing. Walton tells us when the wind is out of the south it blows the bait in the fishes mouth. Today, I was fishing in front of a front with a strong south wind so you would think my catching would be excellent wouldn't you. Well...it was in a way. I caught bows and that makes for a dandy day but I had to really work for the dozen I battled in the three hours I was on the river. For me today there wasn't any pockets with bow after bow but rather one or two and then it would be time to move on. The bows really seemed off the bite to me.

Miss Carol went with me today and she donned her waders and carried her rod but she really didn't want to fish so I didn't push the issue. Carol was busy doing her "collecting". She likes to look for things left behind by others (artifacts of modern man) and things that nature has discarded. I did convince her to explore the "Scatters" with me and today we walked across five braids of the river and there were several more in front of us but we left them for another day.



I ended up catching all my bows on olive buggers today. I actually started off with a size 16 beadhead flashback pheasant tail but got zero results which really seemed strange to me. I ran into a couple of other fly fishers and they were also using nymphs and they too weren't having any success at that point.

I fished the bugger by swinging, stripping, upstream, down, and even under an indicator. The action was sporadic to say the least and I had to wade from pool to pool, pocket to pocket to find the bows.

As I went upstream I found a spot on the bank I could attempt to make a decent roll cast. I found a couple of bows in a seam there but what was driving me bonkers was the risers in the middle of the river with me no room to make a back-cast and this particular part of the river was simply not wadeable. I left the risers to their frolics.

I went just as far upstream to reach the Ancient Boulders and waded across the river to a spot that usually holds bows. It was here I did better than any other place that I fished today. I battled five bows in about fifteen minutes while Miss Carol took a siesta on the bank. We both were pretty much done for the day and shortly headed back downstream on our way back to our prairie home.