January 6 and Short Sleeve Shirt!
If you did not fish this past weekend, you missed out on some great weather. Starting with last Thursday, we had temperatures in the 60s and Friday, I know it reached 70. Saturday was still great, in the upper 50s. Yesterday started cooling down and today we are expecting mid 50s. Still not too bad. Looks liks low to mid 50s until Thursday when it will cool down to the 30s! Also, we are expecting rain some time tomorrow. Friday and Saturday, not too bad….40s and sunshine.
Generation has been great…or should I say the lack of generation has been great! At 10:00 a.m. Thursday, the generators shut down and stayed off until 6:00 a.m. Friday morning when they were on for only three hours. From 9:00 a.m. Friday morning until 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening, we had no generation. They shut down Saturday at 10:00 p.m. and stayed off until 6:00 p.m. yesterday. They are on this morning, but the projection is for shut down around noon, and off for 5-6 hours. Maybe we will see the same generation pattern we had most of last week which was off for 5-7 hours during the middle of each day.
Thursday, Stan and Doc celebrated Doc’s 78th birthday early. Doc tries to fish on his birthday, weather permitting, and he had something to do this year, so they did it early. Doc had a great birthday trip. Lots of fish on the primrose & pearl midge early in the day then the copper dun for the drift out. Meanwhile, Jim had Jack and his wife, Joanna, from Indiana, out both Thursday and Friday. They had a couple of very good days using the rusty midge with the blood worm dropper, and stripping an olive brown sculpin or the olive bug eyed bugger. Of course, they had a couple days of great weather too!
Friday, Stan had Frank, from St. Louis, out for half a day. They spent the whole trip pulling and catching on the holographic green crackleback with and without a sinking leader. Lots of fish taking this. They tried a few other streamer patterns, but this is what they wanted. Mike, from Oklahoma, but also has a place here in Branson, spent half a day on the water with Carolyn. They too found that the holographic green crackleback was the fly of choice….lots of fish to the boat. This was definitely a picture perfect day. Very good fishing and before the trip was over, Mike had taken his heavy jacket off and was fishing in his short sleeve shirt!
Saturday afternoon, Carolyn had Lewis, from St. Louis, on the river. Fun day of catching and they did not want the holographic green crackleback that day. Nope! It was a size 16 gray scud under a size 12 UV gray scud. I asked Lewis how many fish he caught and he said, “piles”.
We are still seeing and catching lots of smaller fish, but we are also starting to see more of the normal size, 15-18 inches. Almost all of the larger fish we caught over the past few days were spawning males….good color, good fighters, wide sides, and solid.