Little Missouri Fly Fishing

Have not seen any hatches on the upper part of the river, neither mayflies nor midges. I've seen some minnows and a few crawfish in back of my house, that's a little further down river. Water clarity is great. There is no vegetation at the park. You use to be able to stand on the wall with vegetation below and see bream, bass, sunfish, etc., alll that's there now is a dirty bottom, no nothing!! Same way from meat hole up to dam. The bottom has cleaned up a bunch because of the generation they are doing each evening. 

NOW THE BAD NEWS!  The reason the Corp is generating at six in the evening is that the divers and work crews are still working on the dam. They still have 2 big barges and 3 big crains there. I assume they fixed the intake tube that supplies water to two generators and are now working on the other intake tube that supplies the single generator. Will the same thing happen when they open that tube and start up that generation for the first time in almost 2 years???😬😬😬  I'm sure it also is full of all the same junk the other one was (rotten debris, what ever chemicals they are using, methane!!) will the game and fish take the chance of stocking only to have the new fish killed off like the nice carry over fish were?? Think about it!! 

Smallmouth - Bronze to Olive - with  vertical stripes ONLY! That's if stripes were even evident...

Kentuckies - very hard to distinguish from largemouth, except the upper jaw on the largemouths extends past the eye. Kentuckies does not.

Very easily any one of the three since they're all present!

And thanks, everyone, for the kind words!

Sandy is fair. 🫤 Parkinson's is brutal! 😔 We did get to Colorado this summer at least! 😎

I can recall back in the 70's how the river had often been referred to as a "dead river"! That there wasn't much life out there. Presumably because of the transition from a natural seasonal flow and temperatures to a tail water. Changed the entire ecosystem! Which is why the AGFC started stocking trout to begin with.

I will say that over the decades it was quite apparent that whatever invertebrates were lost in the transition certainly made a full recovery! To the point where it was teeming with aquatic life!

It'll be back. Mike - what have you seen as far as any Light Cahill hatches? We'll be getting into their peak hatch period over the next four weeks!

MIKE, your reports have been both helpful and very interesting.  Hopefully the river and Mother Nature can adapt to all the mechanical and physical manipulations impacting it and the creatures that inhabit it.  Time will tell.  Thanks for all you do.

Caught my first smallmouth at the bridge close to Langley over the Labor Day weekend. We were staying at Shady Lake and I made a little run. I think it was a smallmouth. I don't know my bass. I came home and looked up bass. It was marked like a smallmouth so I'm calling it one! Caught it on a minnow pattern I learned from Kelly or Cheech, not sure which (YouTubes). I had been fishing a crawfish, para nada. Minnow worked. The fish was about 10". The ones I saw in the water, I assume they were smallmouth also, were about the same size. I didn't have any topwater poppers or anything to try. I'm completely new to warm water fly fishing, so I'm well pleased to have caught something.

Yeah, thanks, Mike! It's been much appreciated. Y'all, does this mean that the repairs are finished and that things should be "back to normal" generation-wise?

Thank you, too, Jeff, for all you've done here through the years. I hope that things are going well for you and the Mrs.

Edit: Hopefully things will get back to normal by say, sometime in October. I imagine there won't by anything to fish for until the first stocking, whenever that will be. The bad kill of invertebrates and, one presumes, fish, that occurred about when generation first began, I would thing was because solvents were flushed into the river, leftover junk from the repairs. In that case, hopefully it's a one-time disaster and things will improve a lot in coming weeks and months.

Jeff Maybe we should have some casting instruction and fly tying lessons at the riverside Park. And a cooking contest.
We would be up for one.
Jeff thank you for all you have done for the little Mo these past years. 🙏🙏

I think everyone should be thanking you Jeff for providing the web site so they could get the information!!  Thanks Jeff. Hope you and Sandy are doing well. It's 55 degrees here on the river this morning. What a perfect morning to fish, if we only had fish!!! 

Doesn't sound like there will be very much to report for another month anyway... 🫤

Mike, you have a great help for everyone out there!