“I’m not feeling very well – I need a doctor immediately. Ring the nearest golf course”

-Groucho Marx

It’s July. Primetime. Primetime but I haven’t seen a lot of fish up eating on the surface in spite of visiting several rivers. My favorite prairie river looks dead. Winter kill due to low water last summer, then a tough cold winter? I don’t know. I do know I covered 5 miles of it this past weekend in the heat and didn’t see fish where I usually see them. It looked empty. It was a ghost town. Music from a Sergio Leone movie started playing in my head while I walked, looked and saw nothing. Too bad. It’s the best sight fishing river around and the most challenging. It’s a place where you have to use your full skill set and fish almost perfectly in order to fool its large wary trout.

My local tail-water river is kind of producing.  Early morning has been good but not at the other end of the day. No evening risers! What’s up? Not enough bugs…hatch not dense enough? I’ll try again one night this week. Maybe my last outing was simply an anomaly. It usually fishes well just before the sun goes down. It’s when big trout start munching in the shallows in locations where bugs collect.

chic drift boat

My local river, the Crow, also didn’t have rising fish the other night. Some PMD’s were out but no significant response. No large sippers. Hum!!!

The immediate and long range forecast is hot: 30 to 35C for next two weeks. I’ll have to fish early or late, or both, on my favorite rivers and fish the streams way up in the mountains mid-day. That’s the plan.

Maybe golf would be easier!?

I once met and angler in upstate New York who when asked if he played Golf replied,  “Not while I have a pulse”.

dog tired, end of day