North Platte Lodge has a few awesome dates available. April 19-22 is prime spring fishing as is May 5-8 . Don’t forget we have held the Eclipse dates of Aug 18-22 for 12 anglers!
Fishing has been stellar in Central Wyoming. The North Platte River is clear and running at 1000cfs. Miracle Mile has been pretty solid despite some very questionable mis-info from shuttle drivers. Your best bet is to call the shop and get the current report. Due to our location, we constantly have folks filing in and out from the area tailwaters and we use our trove of available info to give you the straight information. Midges are the food of the day and The Reef Fly Shop’s PAL has been a top producer. Fish bugs! Shorter rigs have been super fun. Streamer fishing was pretty good this past week despite cooler water temps. We had guest go lower on the Grey Reef system and tied into several browns and quality rainbows. Not much dry fly to speak of but the Big Horn is priming for baetis. Big water in the Wind River Canyon and the Wedding of the Waters. Boysen is being purged as inflows are dictating.
April 1st will see a slight increase in day trip rates but you can get in the 2016 rate before April 1st.
The Lusby Road was supposed to be closed today and tomorrow for it’s annual redo but the Wyoming Game & Fish opted to postpone until next week due to some wet weather arriving in the Alcova, Wyoming region. Also April 1st makes the beginning of the month-long fishing closure between the cables at Grey Reef. Hold your rig and enjoy watching spawning trout. Do this at all spawning areas and refuse to cast when your guide instructs you to fish to areas that are obvious spawning grounds. The future of our river depends on this self control as does the future of this “sport”.
A good guide does not need to(nor will they) rig you up with pegged eggs or flies or fish barbs. 6 Bait Cop-Out…that is pegging 3 over 3 hooked (barbed) flies and disregarding the law that states a fish MUST willingly take the hook into its mouth. The Game and Fish is failing in this dept. If we need 6 (or even 4) flies/baits/whatever for success we are not much of an angler and our guiding is glutinous and damaging. Do not allow us guides to destroy the resource by allowing these techniques to perpetuate. Lets do a 2 fly per rig max and discontinue pegging. Lets mandate barbless hooks. The public should demand that we take a conservation stance and that the experience must not be without instruction, technique and respect for the fish. It gets pretty boring pretty fast when all you are doing is holding the rod and you have no connection to the process that makes fishing interesting. Why is a fish here? What should I do based on observations of the current, hatch, time of day, birds etc. What are these bugs and where do they come from? I can’t believe a trout this size can see something so small! Come on Game and Fish, enforcement on the fact. 1. In Wyoming the law states “a fish must willing take the hook into its mouth” or it is illegal snagging. If you are pegging with the intention of snagging the fish with the hook below you are fishing illegally. 2. Game and Fish budgets are being cut BUT the impact on the fisheries and more importantly the fish is increasing as a result of ignoring the law. Simple math dictates this is not sustainable. This doesn’t happen on all Wyoming waterways but the Lower North Platte, Green and Big Horn Rivers are being demoralized due to this issue.