Tattered Fly | Forum

With this year coming to an end, I thought I'd share some of my observations of the Owyhee " post flood ".

On the river: The most signifigant change I noticed was the change in color, which has only recently returned to it's normal ugly green.  The moss beds were washed away but are beginning to form again in some areas. For the most part, the river appears to be back to normal.

On the bugs: Major changes here! Most notably, the absence of Callibaetis may flies and the larger species of chironomids. The ant populations were down, but no doubt, they will return! PMD's were active earlier in the year,  but in lesser numbers, and it appeared to me, they were found in locations not found the previous year. Mahoganies were a pleasant surprise for me this year, as I found them to be my " go to " species this fall . On a cloudy day 3 weeks ago, I experienced the largest hatch of mahoganies I have ever seen on the Owyhee, and it resulted in my best day of fishing of the year, with half a dozen fish landed between 18 and 24 inches. I finally had to quit because there were just too many bugs on the water!

On the fish: Immediately following the high flows, the fish were very thin and smaller in average length than last year. They fattened up a bit as the year progressed, but I found the average size down from last year. One needs to know however; I didn't catch many fish this year!

On the fishing: I had only two trips that were very productive this year. Once, early in the spring, in a steady rain, I caught maybe 9 or 10 fish during a PMD hatch ( the fish were rather small by last years standards) and the trip I spoke of earlier. In general, I couldn't catch many fish, unless there was some surface activity taking place. Nymphs were a bust for me this year. Perhaps, this is because I fished  the same patterns as last year. A flash-back, bead -head pheasant tail on the point, and a bead-head chironomid larva as a dropper, always produced last year, with the dropper taking fish 90% of the time. The fish reports were recommending these patterns throughout the year and reporting good success fishing them, however, I didn't find this to be true. This year, I had most of my success fishing the edges with dry flies and my only sucess nymphing was in the riffles.

These are only my observations and I'm sure many of you have a different perspective of the fishing on the Owyhee, after all, I fish a very small portion of the river and I don't fish it every day. I'd really appreciate hearing from you guys, in particular, those of you who may have had good success nymphing.

Thanks,

Jim B.