Monday was the first June day with regular angler, Bob. We made a plan to meet up with some friends at the end of the day on the upper Bitterroot, but when we arrived at the put-in there were already 9 boats in the water and another one getting ready. We had to pull the plug on the evening cocktail and retreat further downriver. At Hamilton we geared up without another boat in sight and high hopes of single dry fly fishing. Bob’s very first cast yielded a cutthroat on a golden stone dry.

That was a sign of things to come as there were trout looking up in all of the likely places including a big 19-20″ brown that was holding tight to log. That was an exciting fight as Bob had to keep the fish out of the log and then dodge some mid-river wood before sweeping down a fast run into some slow water. Trout continued to eat the big stone until we stopped for lunch. Not long into the afternoon we found a side channel with rising trout and switched over to a PMD pattern. Bob had a heyday in there landing 6 on the dry with the best a 17″ cuttbow. The mayflies continued to pour off throughout the afternoon and we found several different spots with actively rising trout. They weren’t just sipping either, they were crushing the mayflies which is a little unusual but it was great fun to watch.

It was interesting to note that when we had solid cloud cover there were good numbers of rising fish and they were good sized. When the sun was out there weren’t many rising trout and the fish we tagged were smaller on average. Sun or clouds though, the rod was bent most of the afternoon with a mix of cutthroats, rainbows, and browns. Fish were moving out of their feeding lanes and even chasing dragging flies downstream to eat. Stuff that rarely happens later in the season and we both laughed at how aggressive the trout were today. By 4 the sun poked out for good and Bob had his fill today so we pushed the last half mile to the ramp. Our day didn’t go as initially planned but the fishing more than made up for it today.

Tuesday I was out with local angler, Jim, on his favorite stretch of the Bitterroot. We started off with a single dry fly in an upstream side channel and Jim stuck the first cutthroat of the day on his second cast. We raised two more in that spot before moving on downstream. We had two rods rigged today. One with a bigger golden stone and the other with a smaller PMD. The golden stone rod proved to be our workhorse in the morning. They weren’t looking up in all of the spots early, but there were enough eats to keep our attention. The PMD fooled a few in side channels but most of our fish before lunch came on the golden stone. After we finished lunch there still wasn’t much in the way of bugs coming off so we stayed with the big fly. There was a definite improvement in activity right out of the gate. Fish were eating in almost all of the likely spots with a better average size in the afternoon.

Most of the runs produced at least one trout and some gave up 2 or 3 on the big dry. Then we worked another side channel with the PMD and decided to stick with it in the main river. Jim landed 3 in the next run including a healthy 16″ cutthroat. From there we stayed with the smaller dry the rest of the day and eventually the bugs started to come off around 3. Once that happened we had more rising fish and even better action. It’s always fun to target actively rising trout and for a while in the afternoon Jim was picking off 3 or 4 risers per run. The hatch didn’t last terribly long today and we closed out the last mile with no risers and just a fish or two per run. We had solid action from start to finish today with a good mix of cutts, rainbows and browns. There were lots of fish from 10-14″, a decent number of 15-16 inchers and the biggest of the day was a bright cutthroat around 18″. The upper Bitterroot rarely disappoints in late June and today was no exception.