Fishing Report - Middle Fork Feather River

Today I took a few hours to fish and evaluate the current condition of the MFFR. A bright sunny day with a bit of a breeze and air temps around 75. The surrounding land is SO green, and wild flowers have just started their dance. Water temps are still hovering around 55, slightly warmer in skinny slow areas of the river. I high sticked with a baetis flashback nymph in a #16, a golden stone nymph #8, and two splitshot. The river is high, but very fishable, it took much effort to land a few bows from 8-11". I saw BWO's, and PMD's hatching, but even then it was very light. I have not seen one riser so far this year, which is a disappointment - When you see a head it can give you hope, and there was none of that here today. Though the fishing was off the birding on the banks of the MFFR have been off the Richter scale! I have never seen so many warblers in the thickets, many times you can't see them but their calls are so loud and charming that you can't help but not to notice.

CARP! Yes, there were many carp in the slow skinny tailouts of major runs! I put on a Burk's bottom roller in brown with a bunch of lead 8 inches in front of the fly and sight fished to numerous cruisers. It took a while but I finally put my fly in front of a 23" golden ghost, and later a 18 incher. Carp are smarter than trout and hard to catch, and they do have a great fight in the beginning of the battle often stripping your spool out - That was the beauty of it all today - a total surprise of hungry carp. I would rate the fishing right now as fair and improving. It will not be long before things "pop" and fishing will be on fire. I now know that yes indeed we will have a great evening dry fly game that may go until mid August.