June 11

Sarah and I spent the last few days showing off Montana and Yellowstone to some family on they're first trip to the Big Sky state. Earlier in the week, before the day trips into the park Sarah's dad, Dennis, and I hit a small lake and put the hurt on the fat Rainbows that call this place home. The pictures show each of us with nice fish but both were actually caught by Dennis. He insisted that I hold the first one because I'm smaller and I would make the fish look much larger. The fish caught earlier in the day were fooled by olive leech patterns on long leaders stripped slowly over the drop offs. Later in the day, and after an hour or so of rain, we saw that fish began to feed the a few Callibaetis that popped on the surface. With fish cruising back and forth at the drop offs hunting for emerging bugs, we suspended Callibaetis nymphs and soft hackles about 3' under an indicator. Sure it's a little like worm dunking in a farm pond, but it worked.