Our first visit to the North Platte was impressive. We found many big, hard-fighting rainbows stacked throughout the river. We started out fishing an area below Grey Reef called the Outhouse Hole, which was recommended to us by a guy we had met on the Frying Pan River earlier on our trip. The fish were all stacked up in the large pool below the island. It required a lot of weight to get out flies down, but if you could get them near the bottom the fish would slam them. We each hooked probably close to 20 fish, but were only able to bring in 6-7 each. Heavy tippet was needed to fight these fish in the strong current. The flows were near their peak at 900 cfs and if the fish got out into the stronger water you were in for a fight. Many of the fish hooked were in the 18-22 inch range and a couple took us into our backing. During the afternoon we sight fished in the shallow rifles and the fish took about any small fly drifted past them. The evening proved to be tough fishing, with pheasant tails and red midge larva producing the most fish. The best technique was to dead drift the flies under an indicator. Small copper johns and rainbow prince nymphs also produced a couple of fish. Overall the rainbows were some of the hardest fighing fish I have ever caught, especially when they got out into the current.