Salmon Fly Time

Salmon Flies on the Big Hole

We floated from Jerry Creek to Divide on the Big Hole, yesterday. June 18th. And still no Salmon Flies. That's about as late as I can remember. They're usually thick by this time. It has been cold and rainy for more than six weeks now, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

When the water is high cold and off-color like that, and when the flies haven't started hatching yet, it can be tough. The few fish we caught were good sized. I was fishing an extra heavy bonefish fly with a brown foam Salmon Fly nymph (a Marshmallow trailing off the bend of the Crazy Charlie hook. The Crazy Charlie does the same thing as split shot on the leader, but it catches a lot more fish than split shot. That's a favorite early season way to fish for me.

Jerry Creek to Divide, on Saturdays, is the local yokel float, where no outfitters are allowed. It's a pretty good deal. If you're a Montanan and not an outfitter, you can drift the river at peak time and only have to share the water with a handful of other boats. We saw another couple who clearly knew how to fish. They were drifting small beadhead nymphs in shallow riffles, using red yarn indicators. It looked like they were catching a pretty steady stream of small fish. That strategy works, I guess, but it's not the way I drove two hours to fish. Salmon Fly time is big flies big fish time for me.

Streamers: Big Streamers work surprisingly well during the Salmon Fly time, especially early and late in the day and before and after the peak emergence times. Colorful Bou's (brown orange red and yellow marabou streamers) are a long standing Big Hole tradition, as are the Brown and Yellow Yuk Bugs everybody refers to as Lyle's Specials, after Lyle Reynolds, the veteran but now retired Big Hole guide. I've caught some extra-big fish on Roadkill Streamers at Salmon Fly time too.

Big Wet Flies and Nymphs: They way I fish most often is with a large, unsinkable, foam-bodied dry fly adult, with either a non-floating, drowned-adult pattern or a large foam stonefly nymph trailing off the bend of the dry fly hook. That way you get the best of both worlds: you get to watch a dry fly, and there is nothing more fun that watching fish rise up and snatch those giant floaters off the surface. But you will catch more fish on the wet flies. That's just the way it is. In other words, if the wet flies are the most effective way to fish, but the dry flies are the most fun, why not do both at the same time. Have my cake and eat it too is my life's guiding principal.

Dry Flies: There are a lot patterns. The thing you need most is floatation. Foam flies are the most servicable.

Golden Stones: The golden stonefly hatch overlaps the bigger Pteronarcys Californica hatch some, especially toward the end of the Salmon Fly hatch, rather than the beginning. Fishing the Golden Stone hatch is deja vu all over again, except the flies are a little smaller. Same flies, same tactics, same opportunities, with slightly smaller, slightly yellower flies.

Evening Fishing: Elk Hair caddis and Stimulators become a vialble way to fish later in the day. Salmon Fly time is near the solstice, when it stays light 'til ten o'clock every evening. If you stay out that late, you'll find you can put the big bugs away and fish Elk Hair caddis in shallow bank-side runs and riffles. The fish will still eat the big bugs then too, but by that time you're often ready for a change. And the later it gets, the better the small dry flies work.