For the life of us we don’t understand why so many fly fishermen overlook the Gardner; it’s a very pretty, small, western river flowing through quite varied terrain, and tends to fish pretty well in varied flows as we so often have during the season here in the West. 

Despite the early season’s high water, the Gardner has been fishing pretty well this year, and has borne quite a bit more pressure as it cleared earlier than many of the Park’s other waters.  Folks have been chasing the Golden stones, Caddis, Yellow Sallies, and Stone Flies on the lower river, and a friend had a great morning yesterday throwing attractors to small brookies up high.  He was very impressed at the numbers of mosquitoes in some of the marshy areas – bug spray and a head net saved his day. 

Flows were 297 cfs at 0845, with today’s average 248 cfs. 

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Flies to have in the box:

Dries:  Caddis – EHC, X Caddis, Electric Caddis, EC Caddis, Spent Caddis – tan and olive; Golden Stone; Yellow Sallie – Headlight, Glasstail; Attractors – your secret weapon, Royal Wulff, Coachman Trude; Stims – yellow and orange

Nymphs:  PT; BHPT; BH Hares Ear, Copper John, olive; BH Prince; Lightning bugs, gold, silver, green/olive;  SJW for stained water after the rains

Streamers / Other: Woolly buggers, brown, yellow, olive, black; Sparkle buggers, same colors; Girdle bug;

Terrestrials: Soon, maybe a beetle or two

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