The Frying Pan River fished a lot tougher this trip and we had to work hard for our fish, while averaging 15-20 fish a day. We mostly fished the upper river, hoping to tie into some of the larger rainbows. With the flows close to 40 cfs, the fish spooked easily and held pretty close to cover, making getting good drifts on them a little tougher. We also didn't find many big rainbows, except up near the dam. There were a suprising number of fish in the flat water between the dam and the bend pool. Most of these fish were late spawning browns, but we did catch a couple of 20 inch rainbow feeding off the eggs behind fish on the redds. These fish also seemed more willing to take our flies, as they were very actively feeding. We found that really long leaders and tippet worked best, as the fish also seemed to be shy of the fly line. The bend pool was really slow with the lower flows, but an occasional brown was caught after removing our indicators. There were a couple of 7-8 pound browns roaming the pool, but they wouldn't hold long enough to run a fly past their nose. The fish in the upper river are definitely educated and indicator shy. We fished small beadheads, followed by black biot emergers with most fish taking the bottom emerger. The browns tended to take the beadhead more often. Other successful flies were the black beauty, miracle nymph, red midge larva, and pheasant tails. We also had some sucess with a new fly that looked like a prince nymph, but with rainbow colored dubbing.

The fishing was pretty tough up at the dam. The lower flows made it easier for the fish to see the tippet and gave them more time to examine the flies before taking them. Some rainbows would eagerly take a fly if you took off your splitshot and fished it just below the surface in the top foot of water. A lot of times the mysis shrimp stay up high when they come out of the dam, so some of the fish like to come up and pick them off. We did manage a couple of nice bows and lost one over 10 pounds. There were rumors of a 20 pounder being hooked the previous week, but it chose not to show itself when we were there. There definitely were some nice fish in the pool. Smaller mysis (size 20) also proved to work better then the larger ones. Not many people were fishing the lower river, but it was fishing really well. There was lots of dry fly action, with the midge hatch in the late afternoon. A small Adams or Midge with a Pheasant Tail dropper worked well and so did Prince Nymphs and San Juan Worms under an indicator. The fish seemed to be stacked up in the deeper pools on the lower river. Mid-day to late afternoon fished best, after the water had warmed up from the sun.