Trout fishing has slowed to a crawl in our lakes up here due to the warm weather.  This has become a common occurrence the past couple seasons.  To  a year round fly fisher this can be a problem.  Winter time I can hit the Colorado River/lakes along with the local bass haunts where weather allows goood fishing for bass and stripers.  Summer time presents another problem.  It’s TOO hot everywhere anymore.  I had to find a solution or go nuts.  Problem solved.  Within 15 minutes of my home I can hit Show Low and can be reasonably sure I can catch smallmouth, largemouth, walleyes and a few trout.  Recently I started hitting Rainbow for the grass carp and found it to be very intimidating and frustrating at times but very rewarding at others.  These fish will hit dry flies if you get lucky and hit it right.  They are very wary and much harder to catch than trout or bass AND the fight is awesome.  The average grassie in Rainbow goes about 5-7 lbs and there are enough in the lake to make it interesting.  One of my buddies landed one that went close to 15.  This one took a hopper and went 8 and took me close to ten minutes to land on a 5 weight.

I realize everyone is not going to drive 3 hours to catch carp but there are many, many more opportunities in the valley than up here.  Take advantage of what you have and go fish….at least until you can’t handle the heat anymore.  Time for a cool one and some AC.  You have two fly shops in the valley now that have employees that can get you into one of these guys.  Try it….I think you’ll be surprised.

Just got back from a few days fishing the Bighorn with Nomada Flyfishing.  We stayed at the Bighorn River Lodge and was very impressed with the entire operation…First Class.  Good food, good accommodations and great guides.  They got us on browns and rainbows over 20″ on hoppers.  I had two fish that took me 50 yards into my backing headed upstream and I never landed them.  One Brown I got to the boat had to go 22″-23″.  Rest of the time I threw streamers….can’t ask for anything more than that.  Everybody caught more than their share of good fish….plan on going back with them next year.  Sorry no pics…just lazy

The hopper bite is on at Becker.  Both Tigers and Rainbows are chowing on them.  Good early morning when they are up munching midges and then again after the wind starts up, hit the shorelines.  Strong fish….had two rainbow breakoffs today on 4X.  Wind didn’t seem to bother the bite.