Cicada Hatch On The Green

So it finally happened. I was finally on the Green River during the coveted Cicada hatch. The trip started out about 3 weeks ago when my friend Brent invited me to go with him to Missula, Montana to float and fish in that area during this weekend. After talking it over with Liz there was no way I could make that trip since I just got back from California. But with run off Brent decided not to go to Montana and called me to see if I wanted to float the Green on Friday and Saturday. I couldn't go Friday cause of work, so I gave them the boat and Liz and I met them out there Saturday morning. The drive went by fast since we had the 300. We met them at 8:30am at the dam. They seemed happy to see us. I guess fishing was pretty inconstant the day before and from their body language it looked like we had our work cut out for us for the day. On our way to stuttle the car I stopped and talked to Denny and Emmitt to get some of their knowledge and a life jacket. I'm sure glad I did. Denny told me what I wanted to hear. "Fish Cicadas" I bought a few of his favorites and we were off to the water. Now thinking about it, it was the prefect day to fish Cicadas. It had been cold 3 days before and warming since. Today was by far the hottest day so far. It was sunny and about 80 degrees most of the day. The other thing to note is that the river was running at peak flows for the year, 4,200 cfs. Which was actually very nice I though. We started off fishing deep right out from the boat rap. Dave had two on an landed one and Brent missed one. After that we worked our way to the next big eddy and Dave caught a nice Bow again with his #16 disco. I even threw out the Cicada and dropper and on the first three cast I had fish come up for the fly, but no hook ups. Dave decided to row and I got to fish for about 10 minutes which was just enough time to miss a nice brown and recast in the same spot to nail a beautiful Bow. We stopped and I got out to see if I could get that Brown to come up again and as I fish up to the hole another larger brown killed my Cicada and I was hooked up again. After that we had many fish either nose our Cicadas or come out nowhere with reckless abanddon and nail our Cicada. It was cool to see real Cicadas flying around and on the water as we fished the imitations. The next highlight was when we stopped for lunch. (I think its called Roller coaster Rapid) I got out to fish my favorite hole on the river and on my first cast a large gold shadow moved up from the depths and nailed my Cicada. It was a site to see! It was the biggest fish of the day for me about an 18-19 inch brown. I ended up finally catching a nice Bow on my dropper and them moving up river and landing two other nice Browns on the Cicada. The rest of the float was a mixed bag of hooking/missing fish on Cicadas, nymphs. The one thing I can say about this float is that it was CONSISTENT. We had fish coming to our flies all day. Even though we didn't catch half of them we constantly had action which makes for an exciting outing. But the thing I loved about this trip most is that it was the first time I was able to share this special place with my love of my life Liz. Not the fish, not the great Cicada hatch will top the having Liz with me to share this great adventure. It's the memories that we build and store in our minds that mean the most to us in this life.