Cocks and hens on the North Platte

A beautiful rainbow cock in spawning colors.

I fished one of the North Platte tailwaters for the last day of the Spring break.  The temperatures were in the mid 50's and it was more overcast than not. There were some brisk winds and a few moments of calm which gave the river a mirror smooth surface in the section we were fishing.  The fishing was exceptional with fish consistently taking size 20 bead head midge patterns all day.  The rainbows are starting to move onto the spawning beds.  Jeff and I avoided the shallow gravel beds with some really large fish and concentrated on a deep run.

I started with a streamer and rather quickly had two hits but no hookup. I switched to a two fly nymph/midge setup after watching a number of good fish taking emerging midges in the film.  The standard rig consists of a thingamabobber above a split-shot (an AB or two AA's) pinched on about 8" above a pair of  flies separated by about 16" of 5X tippet.  For this deeper run the thingamabobber was chinched on about six feet above my splitshot. For most of the day, my top fly was an orange copper wire nymph with an angora thorax tied on a size 14 TMC 200R. I don't fish this fly much at Grey Reef but I don't know why since the red "rock worm" pattern that I often throw at the reef is very similar pattern. The fish in the photo above shows the fly. My dropper was a size 20 mercury midge.  Almost all the fish I took went for the mercury midge but this beautiful fish took the orange wire nymph.

A nice rainbow hen.

I fished the eleven foot five weight switch rod all day throwing an 8wt bonefish line.  I fished it as a long single handed rod almost exclusively making overhead casts.  This is a great rod for this kind of fishing - the extra length gives me significantly more reach in my casting and better mends.  I still haven't settled on the right line for this rod but the 8wt is serving just fine for overhead casting - it does not work very well for double handed casts.

Same fish as the top photo - the opening in the net is 18 1/2" from top to bottom.

This is an amazing fishery for anyone willing to fight the crowds - and of course, not everyone is. We fished from about 11AM to 3:30 PM.  When we arrived, it was very crowded - around 1PM people disappeared.  All we could figure was that the Greenies had a long drive back to Denver and had to get home.