Transcript: On the Water with Dustin White
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower, back with another On the Water with Dustin White. How you doing, Dustin?
Dustin:
[0:12] Marvin, you're good. I just got off the water, walked in the front door, poured myself a tasty beverage, and I'm here chatting with you.
Marvin:
[0:19] Yeah, and you even had time to pet the bunny.
Dustin:
[0:22] It did, yeah, yeah. Our pet bunny needed a little bit of love, and so here we are.
Marvin:
[0:29] So we stroked the buddy, we got a whiskey and we're ready to talk fishing.
I looked at the weather and it's funny, the seasons are turning, fall is coming to the northern Rockies and your temperatures are pretty systematically dropping throughout the week and that kind of gets you to that kind of funky shoulder season. What are you seeing on the water?
Dustin:
[0:51] Admittedly, what we're seeing on the water right now on the reef section is a whole lot of moss.
So a lot of that moss, because water has been held back throughout the summer, you know, with the amount of rain we've had and them holding water back so that we didn't have flooding downstream, that permitted a lot more vegetation to be growing.
And we're just kind of caught in that no-man's land with our flows right now.
And now that it's cooling off.
Much of that moss is breaking free. So it can be a little frustrating, it can be a little annoying.
Still catching fish, still having productive days, but it means that we have to audible a bit on our tactics, especially on the reef stretch.
[1:38] So really not doing too much indicator fishing at all at this point.
Most of where I've been seeing my success in the water with my clients have been doing hopper droppers or some sort of dry droppers, which is not all that bad.
It's kind of the silver lining, getting some eats, pounding the banks on some bigger bugs on the surface is a heck of a lot of fun.
But obviously, as we go through the day, paying attention to the hatch when there's, for example, early in the morning and have the trichospinner fall can have some good success and dries there, caddis later in the day, but yeah, mainly where we've been seeing most of our success to avoid much of that moss has been doing the hopper dropper.
That's primarily on the reef stretch. Still is pretty mossy on the Bighorn and Thermopolis, so we're still doing that same tactic up there.
Able to throw a little more dry flies specifically with caddis that way, a little more readily available dry fly bite.
But that's been our primary way of negating that moss.
[2:55] Thankfully, on the mile, we really don't have too much problem with moss at all.
The flow's obviously being a little bit further upstream and between a couple more reservoirs than the gray reef.
The mile is a little bit of a different beast, a little higher gradient.
So moss really isn't too big of an issue there right now.
Still seeing the same kind of bug patterns. You know, caddis is the standard fare.
With the cooler temps, starting to see some blue wings now.
Still seeing a bunch of pseudos out there.
Saw a few trichos a bit throughout the morning, but really, you know, it's starting to cool often it's it's kind of switching gears there.
Streamer fishing on on the mile can be productive as well at this time so if folks are wanting to get out and throw streamers this is a great time to get out in the water and give it a whirl.
Marvin:
[3:50] Yeah it's kind of funny while you were saying all that about moss I was having PTSD from fishing the Big Horn over in Fort Smith in the fall and it's like you You couldn't even get your rig down before it had crud on it.
Dustin:
[4:03] Oh, I know. It's almost immediate at times.
It's the love-hate relationship we have with our western tailwaters.
It's one of the things you just have to contend with, and this is the time of year this year that we're seeing it.
I was just talking to my clients today.
I think it's a little later, because water's been held back, that we're seeing that moss break free and break loose like this.
A lot of times, it can be occurring about a month sooner in the season when we're pretty preoccupied with throwing hoppers, and so you kind of just don't even worry about it.
But right now, when we're trying to still nymph and you have fish eating subsurface, my goodness, is it frustrating.
But we're finding ways around that.
Folks are creative and kind of stay on top of it. I'm sure they'll see success as well.
Marvin:
[4:59] Yeah. I mean, as it cools off, you know, obviously, you know, early on, it just means the hoppers aren't active till later in the day.
But, you know, how much longer do you think your hopper bite's going to hang on?
Dustin:
[5:10] You know, I think those fish still stay accustomed to it. I've had productive hopper days well into October, you know, well, well into October.
And so, you know, it might not be the primary bite, but you can still have some, you know, pretty productive days then.
These fish are still opportunistic. And the nice thing is, as we get into October, you get larger caddis that those fish are accustomed to seeing, they'll still take really, really large bugs, hoppers included.
They get a little less picky. And so even that time of year, might not be throwing a classic hopper pattern, but be throwing, you know, Chubby Chernobyl's or PMX's or, you know, something along those lines that are still in that same ballpark and with the same tactic as, you know, airing out a little bit of a longer cast and kind of pounding that bank and seeing some good success there.
Marvin:
[6:08] Yeah, it's interesting too, right, because you're kind of, I know you're going to wait for things to cool off a little bit at the Ugly Bug, but you guys are going to start to ramp up your Cast and Blast program too, right?
Dustin:
[6:19] Yeah, yeah, it's a fun thing we do every fall and, you know, we have our ranch, our bird ranch we have and so able to, you know, split the days with folks pheasant hunting, a lot of times pheasant hunting in the morning, then we'll go fish in the afternoon or if we have a larger group, kind of flip-flop that and then we also have, you know, our waterfowl season coming up.
Cast and Blast with the amazing waterfowl that we have here on the North Platte just makes a really, really, really fun day and some dynamic just changes that we have to have.
So it's pretty cool and it is, you know, we're just so fortunate to have, you know, the private access and the ranch we have, you know, right along the river to be able to go.
And, you know, folks that are passionate about either waterfowl or upland birds, that, that, uh, we can do that and fish in the same day is, is, uh, just makes for a really, really enjoyable fall.
And, uh, to boot, you know, the cottonwoods that we have that line the North Platte, uh, when they come into their fall foliage, it's, it's just gorgeous.
Marvin:
[7:27] Yeah, that's awesome. Well, you know, folks, we love questions at the Articulate Fly.
We've been trying to do the disco music and Dustin and I were talking before we start a recording, maybe we need to change the tunes up a little bit.
We were thinking maybe go with Smash Mouth or maybe a little Buffett.
Pull some more questions in.
Dustin:
[7:45] From our recently departed, yeah.
Marvin:
[7:48] Yeah. We're going to hack the algorithm, everybody. But you know, you can email them to us, you can DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you.
And then I will send you some articulate schwag if we use your question, and we're going to enter a drawing for a half a day of fishing with Dustin.
So if you don't send in a question, you can't win. And so folks, send us some questions and, you know, it's a great time of year.
I'm getting excited because it's finally starting to cool off here in the Southeast and we can actually get back and trout fish a little bit more easily.
So I'm looking forward to going out there and catch a few and folks, I hope you do too.
Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Dustin. Tight lines, Marvin.
Dustin:
[8:24] Tight lines, Marvin. Thanks so much.