We arrived in the early evening at the Pan and were surprised to find that we were the only ones on the upper river. With the water up, we decided to give the Toilet Bowl a try. The water was roaring, with the normal chute at full blast, plus water was coming out of both of the other chutes. I swear you could have surfed on the waves in the pool. We drifted the pool for over an hour and didn't pick up a single fish on any of our mysis patterns. We didn't even see a fish in the pool. I decided to head downriver to the Bend Pool and give it a try nymphing. I manage to land a couple of 16-18 inch browns right before dark on black beauties. I decided to try casting some large streamers after it got dark and had one large strike that broke my fly off. As we headed back for the night, we saw many fish in the 20-22 inch range moving up into the flat water with our flash light. We had high expectations for the next day.

The next morning we arrived at the river around 6 am and again were the only ones there. I made my way down to the Bend Pool and immediately began picking up fish on mysis. I landed a couple nice fish before things began to slow down. Once the sun hit the flat water I headed upriver to see if we could sight fish for some larger fish. There weren't many fish in the flat water, but I finally spotted a nice brown in the mid-twenty inch range. I took a couple of casts at him and ended up spooking it down river. I continued up to the fast water below the toilet bowl, but didn't spot any other fish. On my way back down I found a nice male rainbow feeding in some faster water. After a couple of casts I was finally hooked up. It took a couple of head shakes on the surface and my hook popped out. The fish bolted all the way back down to the Bend Pool. I continued back down river to the Bend Pool, as the drakes were starting to come off. I tried unsuccessfully to fish a couple of different drake patterns at the top of the pool. The fish were rising sporadically, but weren't interested in anything I had to offer on the surface. I landed two more browns below the surface before we decided to head downriver.

We stopped at one of my rainbow spots and waded through the heavy flows to get out to the pool. When we got to the hole, there weren't any fish in it. Matt spotted one small bow in a faster riffle and quickly landed it on a small midge. We continued downriver to Two Rocks, where Matt landed a couple of nice bows on San Juan Worms and red Copper Johns. Overall the fishing wasn't quite as good as expected, but the higher flows are definitely helping the fish. The browns are finally putting on some weight and are getting chunky. If the high flows continue, next year should produce some good fish. The best flies were black beauties, black biot emergers, miracle nymphs, red midges, red Copper Johns, San Juan worms, Charlies Mysis, and pheasant tails. The flows were way up around 300 cfs.