**Update**July 25, 2013 Middle Provo Fishing Report--Water Levels, Insect Activity, and Large Browns
Minus the slightly higher than optimal river levels, yesterday's
conditions were near perfect. Water temps continue to warm and fish can be
found in riffles, deeper runs, and holding pools. Yesterday was also my wife's
first fly-fishing outing and it was exciting to see her in action. Unlike many
men that I have taken fly-fishing for their first time, where their emphasis is
on casting as far as possible, my wife understood that presentation and staying
within a "water lane," leads to a more natural dead drift. If you are
on the river and are trying to instruct a first time angler how to properly dead
drift, I find it best to describe the river as a huge freeway that features
many water lanes. The more your files cut across the lanes of traffic, the more
disturbance you create. By staying in your water lane, you create less line
disturbance, or micro tension, and you have a greater chance of inducing a fish
to take your fly.
The morning started off slow, but by midday, we were both
consistently into the fish. Unlike my past set-ups, where I have bounced very
small baetis nymphs and UFOs off the river bottom, yesterday I took a slightly
different approach and it paid dividends. We both used a size 14 pheasant tail
(beaded) as our lead fly, with a green bodied baetis fly (size 18) as our
trailer fly. Though there's more water moving through the Middle right now, our
lead flies provided enough weight to reach water depths from the middle to just
off the river bottom. I should also preface that we were both using a long
section of leader (9 ft in total length--2/3 5x and the final 1/3, which
featured our flies with 7x). We also used medium sized thingamabobbers attached
by perfect loops--leader section also tied onto the perfect loop.
As for the insect activity, there was not much above the
surface, though we ended up leaving around 4:30 pm. I did observe a few smaller
fish taking some insects off the surface in a deeper pool. Most of the action
is clearly occurring subsurface. As I have noted in prior blog posts, turning
over a rock or examining a submerged stick will reveal an impressive population
of midges and nymphs, which also provides the opportunity to match coloring,
sizes, and patterns.
Traffic on the Middle continues to pick up, and it will only
increase until after the spawn. This is certainly a turnoff for most anglers,
including myself, but I encourage you to not despair. About 90% of the anglers
that I have observed lately are fishing dry flies. While a few of these anglers
may be getting into the fish, the vast majority are reporting that the
"fishing is very slow." If you ever want to gauge an honest account
of an angler's outing, observe the frequency of their changing flies, or in
yesterday's case, how long they stay on the river. My wife and I observed around 8 vehicles pull up after we
arrived and leave only a few hours later.
Moreover, it has been my overall experience that the browns,
cutts, and whitefish tend to reset fairly fast after the presence of an angler.
Case in point, one my favorite runs was being fished by two anglers and we
decided to fish several runs above them. After the two gentlemen had left, my
wife moved down to the run and hooked into two nice sized browns within the
first 15 minutes.
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