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 the penultimate On the Water with Dustin White. How are you doing, Dustin?
Dustin:
[0:13] Marvin, I am doing well, enjoying the fall season that's setting in here in central Wyoming. So doing great. How are you doing?
Marvin:
[0:22] I'm living the dream, and rumor has it some of your friends from back east have actually ventured out to join you.
Dustin:
[0:28] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, some of my, my steelhead buds are out now on a trip, uh, with, uh, other clients of theirs from back East. So, uh, showing off a bit of our Wyoming waters and having a good time doing it.
Marvin:
[0:40] Yeah. There you go. Have you made it to Frank's yet?
Dustin:
[0:43] Yeah, we are currently there now. I am outside of Frank, uh, at the moment. So yes, we have made it.
Marvin:
[0:52] Yeah. Well, please have a bloody bowl for me.
Dustin:
[0:55] Absolutely.
Marvin:
[0:57] It's a meal right there, folks. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, you are cooling off.
Um, and so kind of curious, kind of what are you seeing on the water?
Dustin:
[1:05] Yeah. I mean, this is the funnest time of year just, uh, for us just cause, you know, we're, we're seeing so much dry fly action.
Um, definitely, uh, some, some good hopper, uh, fishing is, is, is still very, very productive being a lot of fish looking up on the surface, um, kind on each of the three systems we're on, pertaining to the reef, the horn, and the mile.
The reef has definitely given us our most consistent and productive dry 550.
In the morning, you're going to have the tricospinner fall still is there.
Blue wings are showing kind of up with some regularity.
As days are getting cooler, that's more and more prevalent.
But But then we also have fish eating the larger caddis we have out now, still, as I said, fishing hoppers pretty well, but then also crane flies are eating those off the surface additionally.
So that's kind of across the board.
[2:09] The horn and mile, still pretty grassy, but I would suspect that that's going to start to shift here a little bit.
The mile, they've dropped their flows. We're down to winter flows now.
Reef, they've also dropped the flows down to 500 there.
So, water's coming down, everything's coming into shape and for as kind of a goofy summer as we've had, we're now hitting a pretty typical fall for us.
You have streamer fishing that's really, really dynamic, about as good as it gets.
And like I said, the nipping on the surface has been fantastic in all three drainages.
Marvin:
[2:51] And you probably have a little bit more water than you normally would because then they hold a little bit more back than usual.
Dustin:
[2:58] Yeah, we held them back, but, you know, so we've got plenty in the reservoirs.
They, on the reef, did a momentarily bump.
We haven't really quite got an explanation of why that was yet.
Last week, they kind of tripled the flows for about 48 hours and then took them right back down to 500.
So whether that was some sort of pseudo flush, whether they were trying to clear water for, I'm not totally sure, but at least on the North Flatland, we're settled into basically what our winter flows are, so things are going to be pretty stable from here moving forward, so we're really, really grateful for that.
Marvin:
[3:40] Got it. I've got a question for you from Chris, and he wanted to know, are bugs still the way to go, or are beads starting to get it done?
Dustin:
[3:50] Yeah, that's a great question. too early for the beadbite.
We will probably start to see our browns set up to start spawning.
We want to remind folks, don't fish for spawning fish, actively spawning fish.
If you see them I'm on a bad.
Shallow enough and getting enough water you can see them on that blonde gravel, leave them alone.
But definitely those buckets, those runs that are below those can be productive fishing when that's here.
Still a little too early for that, so the bug bite is definitely the way to go. In terms of what bugs those are, it really is changing throughout the day.
As I said before, trichos are going to be the way to go in the morning.
As the day goes on a little bit to mid-morning. Blue wings have been very, very good, especially on some cloudier days.
Caddis, I have it on my rig, kind of from start to finish. A crane fly pattern, had it on to start to finish.
Copper, definitely in certain sections, still fishing that. But the caddis really is kind of been on the rig for most of the day. So yeah, bugs are the way to go.
We're probably still a good month out before that feed bite becomes something that we're utilizing.
Marvin:
[5:10] Got you. And is cranefly larvae, is that code for mothfly?
Dustin:
[5:14] Yeah, mothfly would be that. I misspoke there. So, really not throwing the mothfly, not throwing the larvae, we're seeing them eating craneflies on the surface.
And so, we're fixing some bigger patterns that might kind of be effective for multiple insects.
Insects. So we're using them for hoppers, we're using them for larger Oktobergats, we're using them for crane fly.
I've been a fan of Fischer's PMX, I've been a fan of the Water Walker.
Those have been pretty effective for me the last couple of weeks.
So I think folks, if you have some of those in your fly box or want to tie some of those up, you'd find some success here.
Marvin:
[6:00] Well, that sounds great. And I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, how's the bunny?
Dustin:
[6:06] You know, the bunny is being a jerk as always, but he's pretty adorable. So we'll let him pass.
Marvin:
[6:11] Yeah. Always important to make time to pet the bunny.
Exactly. And you know, folks, we love questions at the Articulate Fly.
You've only got one chance left because we're going to actually do our drawing on the next episode of On the Water.
So you got one more shot to get your question in to get into the drawing for a half a day of guided fishing with Dustin and remember, you know, we love questions. You can email them to us. You can DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
And if we use your question, I'll send you some articulate fly swag and you'll get the last slot in the drawing and Dustin before I let you get back to the bloody bowls and, uh, you know, beef tenderloin quesadillas and all that kind of good stuff.
You want to let folks know where you hang your hat so they can reach out and fish with you. Absolutely.
Dustin:
[6:52] You can find me on Instagram. Dustin James White is my Instagram handle, The easiest way is give the Ugly Bugs Fly Shop a call.
Area code 307-234-6905. Well, there you go.
Marvin:
[7:04] Well, listen, folks, show it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Dustin.
Dustin:
[7:14] Charlie, Marvin, thanks so much.