This week’s picture is brought to you by Joe.
Located at Slough Creek in Yellowstone National Park the sub-alpine basin is the star of this photo.

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Sometimes you run into that frustrating fish that just doesn’t want to cooperate. They may be visible and even visibly eating but they just don’t want what you’ve got. Before the expletives here are a few things to try:

Go lighter on your tippet - Many fish that see a lot of presentations simply learn what to look for and will begin to avoid tippet. Try lighter tippets or even flourocarbon tippets in a size or two sizes smaller than the norm. Of course you may pay once you hook up if it’s too light but at least you’ll get to that point.

Try different presentations - Don’t be afraid to adjust the angle of your presentation, the side of the fish your drift is on, or the depth. Sometimes you have the right fly but just not the right presentation. Try to get your fly over the fish without putting your line over the fish, or try a deeper or more shallow drift with a nymph, try a twitch, or sometimes with streamers and nymphs I’ll sink the fly right to the bottom just in front of the fish and they will pick it up as it sits.

Try different flies - Of course this is the easy answer that everyone comes up with but think a little creatively here, it can pay off. Sometimes rising fish aren’t eating adult insects so try a humpback emerger, RS2, or other similar emerger pattern under the surface. Also, don’t be afraid to try something crazy. A Chernobyl Ant or hopper pattern when fish seem to be eating tricos or other small bugs can surprise you. A streamer pulled in front of rising fish may trigger a strike too. And of course there is always the tried and true method of finding just the right pattern by making small adjustment to try to match the local insects. I really like to go with thin sparse patterns whenever I get refusing fish.

I had the chance to fish for 15 minutes yesterday and found such a snotty fish. After a few dries, a few nymphs, and a several consistent refusals I laid a krystal bugger on the bottom just in front of him. After it sat for a few seconds I gave it a quick twitch and let it fall back down. The fish, a nice rainbow, rushed up and sucked it in right off the bottom. It was a great reward for some persistence.

We have survived! Just 50 miles North of Houston, Huntsville experienced winds in the 80 to 90 mph range. Knocking power out to my house for 5 and a half days. When I moved here just a month ago I wasn’t expecting to get hammered by a hurricane like this. Massive trees came down everywhere. Here’s the biggest I found, I guess the dog leg on the 9th hole just got a little easier:

Well what do you do without power? Go fishing of course! Who needs power anyway? I found the secret spot around here and had it all to myself for the week. Using my 5wt trout rod I caught many bass ranging from 8″ to 20″.. This one was among the largest, I’d say it weighed around 5 lbs. While my rod had some trouble casting the bigger poppers, I managed to get it out there far enough. I caught all the bass on 3 of the poppers I have, our  ultra foam poppers and the deer hair frog.

My appreciation for having power has reached a new level after 5 days of darkness. Back in Utah we never experienced an extended outage so when people said we might not have power for a week or more I didn’t really believe them. It’s amazing how much destruction one of these bad boys can do. Catch many more pictures here:

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This week’s picture is brought to you by Ming.
Ming landed this nice brown at Wishon Lake in California. Thanks Kia for the snap shot.

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First off, I apologize for missing last week’s tip. I got to participate in the America Cup, an international fly fishing tourney in Colorado. I am proud to report that American teams swept the medals, which is really great considering the stiff competition coming from the international teams that included great anglers and even a world champion. Congrats to all those that participated.

The Rocky Mountain weather (including heat, rain, and even snow) at the Cup reminded me that Fall is here. Just thought I’d mention two of my favorite fall tactics that worked this last weekend:

I really like to fish terrestrials and droppers at this time of year. Although it’s starting to cool at night, many bugs like hoppers, beetles, and ants are still out and are as big as they are going to get this year. I love tossing big hoppers (size 10 or even and I usually use a copper john, rainbow warrior, lightning bug, surveyor, or other heavy and flashy attractor nymph as a dropper. Remember to target grassy undercuts and other banks or likely areas where insects fall into the water along with likely looking seams and pockets. Hoppers will be in the areas with grasses on the banks and ants and beetles will be in the more forested areas.

The second tactic that I really love in the Fall is streamer fishing. Brown trout and brook trout get really aggressive as they search out spawning locations and rainbows and other species really start to feed more aggressively in preparation for winter. Look for water temps in the 50s and focus on medium depth feeding locations with medium currents near shallow riffly spawning locations. I really like zonkers, orange blossom specials, slumpbusters, and other bright bugger type flies. Try fishing these across currents with an erratic swinging motion that allows the fly to cross in front of fish.

Take advantage of the great scenery and aggressive fish and get out on the water this Fall.

This week’s picture is brought to you by Bob in the Bristol Bay Drainage area of Alaska.
“I caught this beautiful specimen on a 4 wt. fly rod at the mouth of a feeder stream to a lake I do not recall the name of.”

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As many of you know some of the Riverbum boys got together with Curtis Fleming this summer and put together an episode for his new show The Fly Rod Chronicles.

Here’s the upcoming TV Schedule:

Thursday Sept. 25 @ 3:30pm EST
Saturday Sept. 27 @ 12:30pm EST
Sunday Sept. 28 @ 8:00am EST

***These times are EST (adjust accordingly) on The Sportsman Channel.
For more information check out Flyrodchronicles.tv

This week’s picture is brought to you by Keith on the Madison River, Montana.
“This greedy Brown Trout chased and grabbed my Galloup’s TA Bunker streamer even though it had a 4″ sculpin partially swallowed. You can see the sculpins tail sticking out of the brown’s mouth.”

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Sometimes you can fish a section of a stream that looks prime and find that it actually has few if any fish. One reason can be that that particular section of stream or river may be much higher or lower at other times of year.

Fish colonize new water but don’t often leave once they find a prime spot. Situations like this happen more on undammed freestone rivers and tailwaters with highly fluctuating flows.

Think about what your stream looks like at high flows; it may be too fast for many fish. Also consider what it may look like at low flows; it may be too shallow for fish.

You can discover how much your river fluctuates by looking at USGS and other river flow reports. We make a Streamflow Conditions link available on our site. Look back in time to check what your stream looks like in the low flows of winter and at peak levels in spring and early summer. This will help you understand the character of your river better and to avoid spots that may not hold very many fish year round.