Sweet Memories...

            Memories, how accurate are they?  I remember a par three golf course named Westwood that I would play when I was a kid. From memory the course had a little bit of everything, I remember one hole backed up to apartments and thinking if I skull the shot I may end up breaking a window, hole number 2 was a huge 110 yard carry over a creek. Hole number six I remember as being really long where I would tee off with a wood and then two or three long irons to the green.
           A few years ago I was back in Omaha at the same time as my brother and we decided to get a little nostalgic and go play Westwood again, the first time since we were kids.  The first five holes played like I remembered but going to the long number six I could not believe that it was only 160 yards. A hard wedge was all it took to reach the middle of the green, and I asked myself how was my memory so bad?
        The years I lived up in Winter Park I got to ski almost every day. There was a run on the backside of Mary Jane called Coupler and about half way down there was a boulder launching pad just above a steep drop off. I remember hitting the jump and being what felt like fifteen feet off the ground, my knees still hurt just dreaming of it. A few years back I took my oldest son Zack up to Winter Park for the day and part way through our trip we found ourselves at the top of Coupler. When I realized where we were I got a little lump in my throat and told Zack we had to take the run so I could show him my favorite big air of yesteryear .  We made it down the first pitch and around a few trees and as we came into an opening you could look down and see the boulder and the run disappear below. I asked Zack if he would like to try it and he declined. We skied down to the rock and it was even higher than I remembered, I must have been a total idiot launching off that rock.

         So why am I thinking about memories? If you have been in the shop over the last month and asked me what the fish are eating than what you probably heard me talk about the midges that are currently hatching and then my eyes would start bulging and my mouth would start lathering up and then with a slight drool I would start talking about the BWO’s that should be here any day.   Like the revolutionaries screaming that the red coats were coming I would be shouting the same about the Blue Wings. So with the last few weeks of expectations and the hatches not really materializing I started to question as to how accurate my memory really was. Was it the low water, the bright sunny days, the pressure, why have we not seen what I was dreaming of? I even began wondering if the fish really do gorge on BWO’s as much as my memory serves me. Well I will have to say that I got my first minor glimpse of my good memory today. I got to the water about 1:30p.m. today and the fish were actively munching on midges. I worked my way pretty quickly up the river catching fish everywhere I casted. I got all the way to the Glory hole and started picking up a few fish when I spotted a few BWO’s. About that time noticed several very nice fish move into the feeding lane and I went ahead and switched my rig to a FOD, RS2 and a midge dropper and the fish just tore it up. For half an hour every other cast produced strikes. I would love to tell you that I landed them all but that wouldn’t be even close to the truth, I was still losing at least half but was just too excited to really care. These super picky fish were feeding like crazy. The feeding frenzy only lasted about a half an hour and then they went back to picking at the tiny size 24 midges.

  As I worked my way back I started to think about how special those BWO hatches really are on this river, and I am thrilled they can be as wonderful as I remember. The next few weeks should be outstanding on the river. With the lower water  I don’t think we will be seeing quite the massive hatches that we have seen in the past but just make sure you are fishing when they are popping.

My hint for the blog is for people that aren’t quite sure about signs that the BWO’s are hatching. Watch for the birds, thats right, if the birds are swarming and diving and feeding on something, I can almost assure you that over the next month it will be a bwo hatch. So watch for the birds, get on a FOD or your favorite bwo pattern and hold on…it’s gonna be fun…

As always, thanks for reading, Connell, Cat, Winston and The Drift Fly Shop…………….