Salmonflies
Pteronarcys californica
The giant Salmonflies of the Western mountains are legendary for their proclivity to elicit consistent dry-fly action and ferocious strikes.
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By Troutnut on June 27th, 2019
Having fished the previous day from our campground upstream to the park boundary, we decided on this day to work our way downstream from camp instead toward the lower end of our meadow. The day started fairly well around 10:00 am when I got an aggressive strike from a deep pool and landed a fish with its gullet packed with earthworms and cranefly larvae:
In the year before I took up flyfishing I became an increasingly avid and technically serious worm dunker (to the extent that it's possible), but as far as I know I never caught a trout that was actually stuffing itself with earthworms until now. It made perfect sense here, given the location toward the tail end of a long bend where the river was eating into the silty meadow and the bank was all soil.
The fishing for the rest of the day was pretty slow, as we only hit one or two spots with good action. However, the sunny weather with scattered dramatic clouds kept me focused on my camera as much as the water, each scene more jaw-dropping than the last:
We worked our way to the bottom of our meadow, walked back to camp for a late lunch, and went out for the evening to re-hash the upstream water we fished the previous day. It was slower this time.
In the year before I took up flyfishing I became an increasingly avid and technically serious worm dunker (to the extent that it's possible), but as far as I know I never caught a trout that was actually stuffing itself with earthworms until now. It made perfect sense here, given the location toward the tail end of a long bend where the river was eating into the silty meadow and the bank was all soil.
The fishing for the rest of the day was pretty slow, as we only hit one or two spots with good action. However, the sunny weather with scattered dramatic clouds kept me focused on my camera as much as the water, each scene more jaw-dropping than the last:
We worked our way to the bottom of our meadow, walked back to camp for a late lunch, and went out for the evening to re-hash the upstream water we fished the previous day. It was slower this time.
Photos by Troutnut from Slough Creek in Wyoming
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