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October Fishing Report

Fall Greetings, from the 3 Creek Ranch Nature Center!  In this report we will revisit this years fishing, as well as predict what to look for on our creeks in the coming months. This year started out slowly, as a rainy and cold June pushed back our run of fish and our hatches. However, once the water levels settled in the creeks and the bugs started coming off, the fishing really picked up. From June 15th until about July 5th, we saw some of the best fishing of the year. Fish were taken on Spring Creek and Blue Crane Creek with the massive green drake mayflies, while others were sipping the smaller early season Baetis mayflies. Cody Creek did not fish great early as the huge runoff from the Snake River had it off color for most of the early season fishing. Even still, trout were caught on Green Drakes. As the summer pushed on, the Pale Morning Dun mayflies started showing up on all three creeks. Blue Crane Creek had excellent fishing on the front end of the hatch, where the CDC Comparadun fly was the fly of choice. PMDs poured out of the west fork into the boardroom pool, where many large fish waited for their share. Both the upper beat and lower beat of Spring Creek fished well with PMD Sparkle Duns. We fished larger Parachute Hares Ear patterns on Cody, and managed to pull in some nice trout. The PMD hatch subsided around the first week of August, and leading up to now we have had a void in our mayfly hatch. The weather has been shifty to say the least, making our fishing hard to predict. However, once the weather stabilizes we are hoping to see Sulpher mayflies come around. Historically, this hatch can be tough to fish. These small mustard yellow mayflies emerge very quickly, making it difficult for trout to feed on them consistently.  If our weather can get a little warmer, we also expect to see our hopper fishing really get going. The hopper season is a wonderful time to fish, as we have seen large fish move up to 20 feet to come eat a hopper! It is truly exciting fishing, and it will be happening in no time. Heading into the fall, we will see emergences of Baetis mayflies again, which makes for some challenging and rewarding fishing. There have been some big bull elk around, so we expect to hear them bugling as the leaves change and the weather shifts. We are really excited for the upcoming fall season, and we hope you will come join us soon!