We’ve been fishing the Firehole quite a bit this fall - not sure I can tell you why more this year that in years past - it’s always been a favorite for us.  It might also be that we caught one of the first real BWO days on the Firehole several weeks ago, weren’t well prepared fly wise, and got kicked around a bit by those selective Firehole natives.

Yesterday was supposed to be cloudy and rainy /snowy, but the clouds broke early.  We fished streamers on the Madison for a few hours chasing the big boys, but wanted to get on the Firehole by noon, and away from the crowds on the Madison. 

It was mostly sunny by that point, about 42 and windy, as windy as we’ve fished in the Park for a while.  Duns were coming off in a sputtering volume, and immediately blown off the water.  You can infer from the pic above that we were on a section 3o yards or so wide, and pine needles and small branches were being blown onto the middle of the river by the wind. 

Given more the sputtering hatch than the wind we went with small (18 and 20) BH PT soft hackles and FB PTs, and ended up having one of those amazing afternoons.  Fished down and across (and casting downwind) was a piece of cake, and most hook ups came at the bottom of the swing on the downstream side of the weed mats, or when crossing the deeper runs.   My first soft hackle lasted for 9 fish (less than an hour), and Jake lost his first on a big brown that rolled on it and surprised him.  It began to cloud back up by 3 and we left shortly thereafter to be back in Bozeman for an event yesterday evening - it probably would have kept rolling for a bit longer.

We were so impressed with the soft hackles yesterday - we’re even quickly redoing the newsletter this week to review soft hackles (next issue will deliver on Saturday, don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t) - we’ve really enjoyed using them this year, and they’ve sure been a great pre-emergence fly for us for BWO and Mahoganies….

Good fishing in the snow and rain the next few days….

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Tags: Best Fly Fishing Yellowstone: Random Team Ramblings