Brian Wise

None.... Most of the river valley is eerily quite, and I am yet to see one 'on' the water.

The ONLY way to do it Nortrad. Thrown it in the bag you will keep it in and pull the trigger.

Awesome!!! There have been so many big fish around that area lately.....seriously, I have never seen so many big fish come from that area. One question......how was McKee bridge? How much clearance did you have? Brian

I absolutely dig the Niangua....need to launch my drift boat there.

Wouldn't suprise me to see them in Bennett, but I honestly couldn't tell you for sure. I can say that I have caught fish in the Niangua on a stone though.

Nice Mic! I stopped using regular rubber legs and the silicone rubber legs (sili-legs) a few years ago, there is this stuff called Life-Flex that is SO MUCH better. It is stronger but also moves better than both rubber and silicone per correct porportion. It also winds on as a body better too.....looks like it would be awesome for that pattern. Life-Flex Link Here I agree with Eric....I would probably trim that dubbing down a little too. If it is that long it will probably end up getting laid against the body and almost defeat the purpose. I usually use the hook gap as a good comparison and cut mine even with the point of the hook or maybe a 'touch' longer. Well done man, Stones have been my thing for YEARS and messing with new patterns is a ton of fun. This is what I have been messing with for about a year now....still making small tweaks but here are a couple of videos on a stone of mine (both of which have Life-Flex antennas and tails.) (Sorry for the commercial part of those videos but we try to do that now and then on the Tying Contest.....show people new tying materials in video-form that they may not have seen yet) Wiggle Dub Stone: Chewee Skin Wiggle Stone (WAY better quality)

NICE Eric! That thing won't EVER make it to the bottom will it? You may be able to spin it Mic. Ostrich Herl and Hackle spun makes a very, very cool effect (as long as your hackle is long enough) and it makes it a lot stronger. But I'm with the guys, I don't remember Ostrich Herl being in the "true" Montana Stone..but lets face it, there are TONS of spin-offs of every original pattern out there.

Ha! Thanks Dave....it is a gift.

Thanks guys!!

On top of high water and very little fishing I am preparing for a musky trip this August and have caught the Musky Fly bug lately. 4/0 hooks, bucktail, flash, flash, flash! They have actually made me look at big brown trout flies a little differently too. Anyway, thought you guys might like this video, the fly is based on Brad Bohen's (Afton Angler) "Hang Time" only I added eyes and a different head....too fun. Brian

I am preparing for a musky trip this August and have caught the Musky Fly bug lately. 4/0 hooks, bucktail, flash, flash, flash! They have actually made me look at big brown trout flies a little differently too. Anyway, thought you guys might like this video, the fly is based on Brad Bohen's (Afton Angler) "Hang Time" only I added eyes and a different head....too fun. Brian

ROLF is good to go now, water got into the fishermans room and the camper showers/bathroom but really not much else. Stopped at Sunburst to check on Justin and Amy and watched the river go down a little with them. They are in good spirits (I seriously doubt they EVER get in bad spirits anyway.)

I dig it man!! You guys throw together such well put-together videos...well done! Great to see a youngster on the oars, my 7 year old tried his had at rowing for the first time while him and I were chasing white bass (dead water pool ) and he LOVED it. We had been on a roll before the floods....I can't remember a spring where we had caught SO MANY big fish and then we get smacked with 80,000 cfs, oh well, the river needed it. Brian

In all seriousness....I can't wait until the spring water pushes this mud out and we start throwing crazy big streamers in glacial run-off looking water. mmmmmmmm I have some Musky flies that I have been waiting for the right water to throw at browns.....

Forgive the quality....they are from our phones. Patrick Bridge Looking Downstream from Blair Bridge Big, Big water guys.....

I would agree with Justin...fishing pressure is very, very minimal. The only other real comparisons (fishing pressure wise) to the NFOW as far as size, etc is Taney, the Eleven Point, and 'maybe' the Niangua and I am guessing here but the NFOW and the Eleven Point are probably around the same, and for sure the lowest pressure. A tough comparison would be the Current(that poor river) which is smaller and gets HAMMERED from the St. Louis crowd even in the middle of winter on a nice day. We are a drive from anywhere so we just don't have fishing pressure. 2007 sparked the incredible fishing we have now. Before that we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel from the poor water years but still felt the effects. Don't quote me but 2007 was an incredible spawn, 2008 beat 2007, and 2009 beat 2008 so you are talking a good number of small fish hitting the system through that period (and we had another decent spawn in 2010) couple that with fish that do not grow super, super fast and, in my eyes, we see the reason for not running into the big, big rainbows very often. One thing to keep an eye on when you are here. A good number of our male rainbows are showing a kype at around 12"...it's not a major kype but a defenite kype at 12", and some 15" fish have a pretty solid kype. A kype is a maturity thing (and genetic in others I'm sure because some have a CRAZY kype and others the same size don't) so you have to wonder about that too. Really interesting thread here!

Exactly Phil....you seriously have something with the jigs. ANYTHING that is eye catching that goes straight to, and better yet STAYS on bottom will get eats from big, big fish both browns and rainbows. I have a guy that comes down that got a 21" rainbow 2 years ago and a 23" rainbow last year....we landed the fish about 10' apart back-to-back years and took the photo in the same spot for both fish, pretty cool. I have a couple of 20's through the years and have lost double that many. Kyle just caught a 22" rainbow a couple of weeks ago too. They are here, just VERY far between. You have to wonder about the wild fish growth rate compared to stocked fish growth rate/brood supplementing. Wild fish arguably have a tougher spawn (more active, harder working, etc) and it can take a lot out of them. Look at Triploid fish, they are a hybrid that does not even go through spawning motions and grow to grotesque sizes for that very reason. Stocker fish generally have 'some' brood thrown in during the stocking process (just like we get a few brood browns in out measly brown trout stockings yearly.) That is my take on it, like I said it is simply an educated guess but makes good sense to me. Do we have some seriously BIG rainbows, abso-LUTELY....are they tough to catch, just a 'little'. :-)

As long as I have been around the river I can't really say it has ever been really 'that' common to hook very many true 17"+ rainbows. There are days where you will hook a couple but they are the minority. Our rainbows just don't get to be the crazy pig sizes NEAR as much as, say stocked streams coming from brood. Kyle Kosovich and I were talking not long ago about this exact thing and him and I both can count on one hand how many 20"+ rainbows we have seen landed in the last several years (and that is probably 80% of the total guide trips on the river on top of several hundred days of fishing on our own.) I have a couple of complete guesses why this is but they are just that, a guess. Good thing is we have popped some really, really nice spawns over the last few years.

Niiiice! SO MANY big fish in the river that are uber willing to eat right now.....

I personally think it SUCKS they had to mess with the stocking schedule last year.....I really liked the 2 year old fish they stocked over these 6" fish which are basically brown trout food.

Actually....we do have 'some' natural reproduction in the browns. Enough so that the MDC had started putting a 8" and smaller category on the surveys for the browns. VERY few but we do catch some every year. Actually the first brown trout I ever caught was literally 3". Remember it like it was yesterday, caught in on the most horrible wooly bugger that I tied. If the fins were clean on the other side of the fish I would lean toward wild.

Here Here!!

Fished a group of great, great guys that have been coming for years over the weekend. 2 of the 3 ROLF drift boats were on the water and Kyle Kosovich and I were manning them. Day one we floated from Kelly to Blair. Fishing was a little different than we had ran into lately, the fish weren't super keyed in on the nymphing set up but wanted to chase. Kyle's guys switched over to a small wooly and began getting solid chases from small rainbows for the rest of the morning. After lunch my guys immediately started getting takes on the regular nymphing rig. One of the guys in my boat was a beginner and we broke him in nicely.... Ended the day watching Kyle pull a Crocodile Hunter type of move on a black snake. Day 2 we decided to float from Blair to James which would basically round out all of the trout water for the guys...and it worked. I started one of my guys on a 2 streamer rig. I have fished these with some solid success in the past but rarely pull it out for a guide trip. But taking Kyles que from the previous day I set it up so that an EP Clouser was "chasing" a small wooly and it worked right off the bat. The fish that morning were leaning more toward a smaller nymphing rig but we did get some hook ups on the 2 streamer rig. Just past Sunburst the bigger of the 2 streamers got MUNCHED and we proceeded to watch a big, big brown roll all the way down the skinny water right in front of Justin and Amy's house...nothing like seeing head over tail brown trout literally rolling down that water. This is what I have noticed with the 2 streamer set-up..I don't know if a bigger fish just can't stand watching a small fish chasing another small fish or what..but I won't question it. Ended up killing them at the uppermost island above Patrick on small nymphs both swung and drifted and picked up fish fairly solidly for the rest of the day. I will say that below Patrick fishing slowed down though with a few browns and couple of rainbows to hand the rest of the day.

Secret is safe with me.

Nice! I came around the corner and felt like a total douche....I HATE taking the boat over wade fishermans water. Just to clear the air with all this Happy Ending talk...the only Happy Ending my clients got was a big brown TROUT in the riffle below Sunburst!