End of March Report - Armstrong Spring Creek

It's been a while that I make multi posts on the same day. Reasons being: A. it would be too long to be one post and B. it's worth separating and discussing each.

After I fished DePuy's 4 afternoons in a row, as seen in the previous post, I visited Armstrong Spring Creek in O'hair Ranch (www.armstrongspringcreek.com) on Saturday afternoon. This time, a guide friend of mine from Bozeman, Jared joined.

It was windy as getting started. I started with streamers with no success. Meanwhile Jared was fishing for rises.

Eventually I came up to a spot where trout were rising all over! Now I was gladly switching into dry-flies!! I caught this small yet feisty one on Pheasant Tail Mayfly Cripple-BWO as I believed BWO was prevalent.

I should have stomach-pumped that one but it slipped off.......

Next one was much nicer one and again on BWO pattern.

However! its stomach sample showed otherwise. Midges were dominant!!

I invited Jared closely as there were too many risers for me to handle! He had good times too.

We fished for rising trout with our best and full of enjoyment for over an hour.

After hatches and rises were done, we moved along the creek.
Once in a while, spring creek streamer tactics can be fun!

Egg Muddler!

After this, we were literally blasted by a short but intense storm. We retrieved to a hut, believing "if you don't like Montana weather, wait 5 minutes". We sat and took a break for 15 minutes or so. Storm was gone and we were back in fishing. Now I got back to my own highly skilled spring creek nymphing system. Stomach sample from the first trout with my nymphing still showed more midges (larvae, pupae, adults) than baetis (duns and nymphs combined).

Toward the end of the day, I hit a true jackpot!!

And the next one!!

The hit fly was my own "Flexi Midge Larva".

This was even stronger!!

And the next one!!

The day ended with the typical of Armstrong's rainbow = good style, strong, and vivid colors & spots!!

So although it was one afternoon, it was very much fun and a learning time. Armstrong's and DePuy's are based on the same spring source from O'Hair Ranch but hatch characters were different at each place. And this is the main reason that I made two separate posts. I hope you'd learn something too!!

Today, it was another overcast day = eventually snow, but I filled a fly order. Tomorrow I gotta run town errands. Total I fished 15 days this month. One day short to claim "I have fished more than half of month!!" but it's OK. April is going to be busier and more fun!!