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3. Winter Dries (again)

This is my last winter here in Missouri, so I've been doing a fair bit of fishing. The Current River is a spring creek, and wintertime can actually be one of the best times to fish it. On warm, sunny winter days, you can often find a spotty caddis hatch, and almost surely some midges to get the fish looking up, so I couldn't resist.

I decided to get up real early and get to the river right at dawn. I know an early start isn't necessary in the winter, but I just sort of felt like making a whole day out of it. There were of course no bugs on the water that early, so I started with a #20 Pheasant Tail nymph. The first three hours or so until about nine o'clock were really slow. I got two fish on the Pheasant tail, one rainbow and one brown. Both were in the 10 to 11 inch range.

Then about 9:30 or so, the air temp nudged into the upper 30s and I started to see bugs. The fishing started to pick up on my nymph, and by about 11 O'clock there were just enough caddis on the water to get a few fish rising. But just a few... I really had to target specific fish instead of just fishing the water, as there were still many more fish taking nymphs and pupae and various other under water fare than dries. I didn't get my first fish on a dry fly until noon, a 12 inch brown on a #16 Elk Hair Caddis. It isn't often you get to take fish on decent sized dry flies at this time of year, so I got a real kick out of that. By about 1:30 or so, the air temperature hit 40 and things really kicked into gear. It still wasn't a very heavy hatch, but there were plenty of heads up by this point for it to be pretty good sport, and the catching was pretty darn good for awhile. It started to taper of about 3:30 and it was really getting slow by 4. After that, I switched back the the nymph and got a few more, but it was pretty much over. Still a great day on the water-that's the good thing about spring creeks, that you can find some good dry fly fishing in the winter when the conditions are right. That is one thing I will miss about Missouri fishing.
The stream was really low and clear, and the water temperature was right around 44 degrees. I was fishing about 3 miles downriver from the headwater springs.

MO, glad to hear somebody is catching trout at this time of the year. Up here in Oscoda, it's too damned cold to do anything but cross-country skiing. I now live within walking distance of steelhead fishing but I haven't even thought about it, it's so cold that line guides will just ice right up and make fly fishing just plain miserable if not impossible. Plus, we keep getting more snow...I am thinking of investing in some snow shoes so I can reach the river in case the temps reach into the low thirties one of these days, probably wishful thinking...

Keep nailing 'em and send us some pictures to warm our souls up here in The Land of Ice and Snow!

Jonathon

Way to go MO (soon to be MT)! You can do the catching for us.

Jonathan, did you say cold??? And snowshoes???

Not to try an one-up here, but it was 20below(F) here the last couple nights -not the usual thing here. Here's what I've been doing:

Do like the locals -Snowshoes on snowshoes.

Some tying material there, Paul?

Jonathon

Yes. I like mountain cottontail the best. It's a dun color that makes great mayfly wings/legs. MC's have longer foot hair than other cottontails which is a plus. This fly, a Drunella pattern for mountain water, uses MC foot hair for wings, legs, and dubbing.