Fishing Report & Helpful Map

[Phil Lilley]

This is a map that I've marked where our brown trout are holding. There are beds in these area so be careful when wading these areas.

There may other areas downstream but since I haven't been down there this fall, I can't say for sure.

[Phil Lilley]

I know... I've marked pretty much the whole area between !3 and Big Hole but for someone who's never been to Taney before or someone who isn't as sure of himself when it comes to the brown run, it may help.

Rolan Duffield and I drove to the dam this morning at 7 am. Water running! One unit and it dropped steadily all morning. We went down to Rocking Chair and fished the north side below the Falls along the bank. It wasn't too much water that we couldn't wade the whole area. I was expecting trout to be midging since they were dropping the water- they usually do- but they weren't except for the cut area below the falls shown on the map. There, rainbows were rising on tiny cream midges. I tried and tried to match them- finally caught a couple on a #26 cream biot emerger. I greased my tippet within 3 inches of the fly so it would drop below the surface just a bit. I had several takes but only a couple of hookups. One rainbow I brought to hand had a small midge emerger in it's mouth. It matched a black #22 thread midge to the tee so I tied one on and had 4 more takes- no hookups.

Rolan caught 4 nice rainbows on a zebra midge #18 under a float it looked like 24 inches deep. He was fishing out away from the bank about 30 feet.

We drove up to the outlets about 9:30 and started fishing just above #2 outlet. There were a few browns and rainbows cruising all along the bank but they were spooky. #2 outlet was packed- they were catching a few and foul hooking most... nothing big. As the water dropped, we worked our way out and ended up fishing the middle of the channel out in front of the outlet- away from the outletters. There were BIG browns sipping tiny midges off the surface and emergers from the film out there so we tried for them. Soft hackles, emergers- even a wooly didn't attract and attention. I did have one BIG follow on a white #18 soft hackle... BIG wake but no take! Water was off at 11:30 am and we left.

Going again tomorrow morning... hopefully we can get Rolan into some big fish!