Big Hole 434 cfs Jefferson 969 cfs
The past couple days the weather and the fishing has been terrific. Yesterday the top water action was good but only producing small fish. It was a bright blue-bird day but I decided to try streamers any way. Not only did we start to catch more fish but the size went up dramatically. A #4 black and olive wooly bugger did the trick. It was a perfect day, warm, no wind and lots of fish.
The day before just as we were getting ready to launch, I had rigged Dr. Bailey’s rod with a pumpkin bugger. As I stripped some line off the reel I noticed that it had retained some memory so I told him we need to stretch this line. I pulled a bunch of line off and made a cast across the river and on the first strip a big brown nailed it. I handed the rod back to Pat and said “he’ll stretch it for ya”. He looked at me in disbelief and just shook his head. I told him I didn’t mean to do that and as it turned out it was the biggest fish of the day. He just said with a grin on his face that from now on I’ll stretch my own line.