Floating the Green River

Getting all our belongings out of the cabin we noticed our guide in front of the fly shop at about 11:30. We hurried and met up with him by noon. We introduced ourselves, put our fishing equipment in the truck and drove in his rig to the boat launch right below the dam. After putting the boat in the water, our guide Roger, drove the truck and trailer up to the parking lot. One of the tough things about floating the A section is the hike from the parking lot to the boat ramp. It is a good mile hike.

Roger rigged us up downrigger style. I have had other guides use this setup before on the green. It is similar to my typical rig that I use on the Weber. A couple of split shot are placed above a knot at the bottom of the line. Two droppers are placed a foot or two above this. We were using 5X tippets for this clear water with educated trout. For flies we were using red San Juan worms and small WD-40’s. We had no luck for the first few holes but noticed the other guides getting rises from large dry flies. I suggested we switch to a hopper dropper system. Roger rigged us both with large attractor dries with small nymph droppers. The droppers are added to the system by tying 2 to 3 feet of tippet on to the bend of the hook. We started having a lot more success with this system. It was also exciting to see the browns rise and hit the large flies.

One method that Roger liked to use was to drift downstream and find fish in the shallows. We would then hold tight and fish over these visible fish. Nick and I ended up catching 8 or 9 fish each, mostly using this method. A few fish were caught on the nymph but most on the large dry. For the last hour of the float we fished streamers. Roger would keep the boat a little more than a cast length away from the shore and we would cast toward the bank and strip back. This was exhaustive fishing, casting as far as we could every couple of seconds with a heavy fly. We were hoping for a large brown using this method but nothing materialized. I had a couple of followers on one cast but that was all.

Back at the fly shop Nick and I got some ice cream before heading to the tent at Dripping Spring. The tent was still standing despite the strong wind all day.