Provo Drakes

Gil and I hit up the Middle on Monday and had a blast. I nymphed for a while in the morning and I met up with Gil about an hour before the hatch should have got going. Fishing was stellar and Gilbert hammered a stud bow right off the bat on a Green Chunk ( one of Gilbert's new sick drake nymph patterns). To put it into perspective, the seemingly small nymph hanging out of his mouth is a size 10!!!! That is a BIG bow!






The fishing got better and better as the hatch progressed. At about 12:30, the adults showed up and the real action began. I used a drake epoxyback emerger from Rainy's and the fish couldn't get enough. One on of my first casts with the emerger I stuck a nice 16 incher.







After that I missed a HAWG four times in about 2 minutes....talk about sucking it up. As I moved upriver, I caught another nice fish in riffle. While I was fighting him, I saw a smaller fish flash behind him and I new that he had taken the dropper suspended behind the hooked fish. Two fish on at once can be problematic, but it sure was sweet! Lucky for me, Gilbert was right below me and he landed my double. Cool stuff....






We continued catching fish VERY consistently over the next couple hours..... Seriously, I can't remember the last time I had such good action on the top! I probably caught 25+ fish on the Provo in a couple hours mostly on DRIES none-the-less! I love throwing BIG stuff at nice fish. Of course there was the one haunting moment that I broke off a monster fish as he gave a high spirited leap.....why I was using 5x I will never know. The fish probably would have eaten drakes attached to WIRE! Oh well, that's what keeps us going back. . Thanks Gil for the sweet pics, netting assistance, and most of all... a STELLAR trip. Gilbert messed em up as usual with his mastered french/czech nymphing techniques. It will forever amaze me. Still smilin'..................