Arkansas River

My friend Tommy and I finally had been able to synch our schedules together, and Monday found us headed down I25 to the Arkansas river looking for the famous Mother's Day Caddis hatch. We arrived to the local fly shop who told us the hatch was on, but in town and not yet up the canyon where we wanted to fish. We headed upstream into Bighorn Canyon and I immediately fell in love with this river. The scenery is different than any I had fished in -"stone" would be the adjective of choice. "Big" would be another one to describe the river and the surrounding walls.

I started with a golden stonefly nymph trailed 20" by a #18 pheasant tail nymph as Tommy and I started working a likely looking hole. He was first into the fish with a huge 8" brown, the size of which he told me he never caught in this river. Working upstream we both got into larger fish. I nailed a 16" brown on the PT in a deep channel against the bank and several more on the way up. One beautiful run, about 100yds long, shoved up against a steep stony bank below a wide riffle, provided me with a half dozen or so fish of the same size, but now they started taking the stonefly. I'd cast up and across and take some fish on the dead drift and some on the downstream swing, and then walk a few steps and repeat.

Next, around 12:30, we drove upstream to look for BWO. We soon saw the duns on the surface, being blown over by the wind, but fish were not very active on top. We pulled a few fish out of this stretch, with Tommy catching a very pretty brown of about 18".

We headed down into Canyon City and fished the Riverwalk area from 2:30 until 4:30. Caddis were in the air - not extremely thick but for sure a key event. There were enough bugs in the air that we had them crawling on our necks and the fish were slashing the surface with frequency. I was working across stream and having trouble seeing the fly and setting the hook into meat when I could see it. A bit of panic set in, as I figured this was the end of the hatch and it could be over any minute. I change flies several times but never really got into it well. Had many strikes, especially when I added a little action to the flies. Tommy was doing much better than I, especially with a pod of fish immediately upstream to him. We both pulled fish out, mostly on a black bodied tan winged elk hair caddis.

After a beer at the truck, we checked in with the flyhshop who said the hatch happened early, at 12:00, due to the warm night they had. Checking the websites today, 5 days later, the main shops are saying the hatch has not yet made its way above Texas Creek.