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You know when people say that the trout fishing is unbelievably good out west. It is. Jason, Ralph and myself just spent 3 days fly fishing in Wyoming. All the fish we caught were 20” and bigger and we caught a ton of fish. However, they were not necessarily easy to trick.

At different points during the days the Rainbow Trout were keying in on different insects. Fly fishing was phenomenal in the early parts of the morning and big fish could be taken on streamers, leach patterns, scuds, caddis pupae and tiny beatus nymphs. In order to catch fish in the early part of the afternoon, we had to nymph and sometimes we had to use super small pupae and nymph patterns.

We found that a dropper rig worked best. Amber or Pale Scud trailed by a tiny Barrs Emerger. The Rainbows almost always took the pupae or beatus pattern. It was pretty wild to be catching such big fish on tiny patterns. The guys on the river presenting the right flies were hooking up all the time and the guys who weren’t seemed to never hook up.

As late afternoon and evening approached some other patterns produced good results. Big cone head leach patterns, stripped slowly through a pool would sometimes entice big fish to strike and strike hard. We fished all sorts of elements. At certain points there was no wind and at other points there were 50 mph gusts.

We camped out on the side of the river and fished from sun up until sundown. Actually, we fished after sundown. Jason likes to fish with heavy duty head lamps and big leach patterns at night. We did catch a lot of fish after the sun went down. Like all good things nothing came easy. We had to travel a total of 12 hours through the desert.

We had to stop at sketchy desert gas stations along the way for gas, food, smokes and whatever else we needed. Microwaved burritos, terrible coffee, cracked windshields and road kill was the name of the game. But, it was all worth while when thousands of Rainbow Trout started rising all around us. But, we had to work for the fish. Constantly changing patterns, tippet, weight and leader length. We all hooked fish. We all hooked big fish. What more can I say. Not much really, other than, its tought to beat western fly fishing.