The Frying Pan was fishing much tougher then our trip in August, but we found a couple of new spots that produced fish. The flows were down much lower at 60 cfs and the fish spooked more easily with the low water. Fishing was tough in the bend pool, but we had great success fishing down below the bridge. The fish eagerly took pheasant tails and San Juan worms. It was possible to catch 15-20 fish in an hour, but they were mostly small 10-12 inch fish. We found a couple larger fish in the pool right below the bend and I hooked into a nice rainbow close to five pounds, but lost it in the moss. I managed to land one nice brown close to 20 inches and another that was 18 that took a BWO off the top. We also caught a lot of fish using a red larva lace midge. In the evening we threw wooly buggers and the browns would attack the flies every four or five casts. I even landed one nice 16 inch cutthroat on a wooly bugger. The best flies were the San Juan worm, Pheasant Tail, Prince Nymph, Larva Lace Midge, Black Beauty, and a green conehead wooly bugger. There was a BWO hatch in the afternoon and a lot of the fish were feeding on top. I caught a couple of nice fish with a size 20 parachute BWO.

Fishing at the dam was even tougher. Moss was flowing out of the dam and the lower flows gave the fish a longer chance to check out the flies before taking them. Rob landed a couple of nice bows, with one close to 7 pounds, but after fishing for most of the day, we still had landed less then ten fish each. The fish definitely didn't seem to be feeding much and it didn't appear that a lot of mysis were flowing out of the dam.