Clark Fork River Fishing Report 6.29.2017

I fished the Clark fork two days in a row, last Sunday and Monday.  Sunday was good—we did a short float from Superior to Dry creek and the flows at that time were still up a bit—at 15,000 cfs. We had decent clarity on the banks, 2-3 feet, and did well on a tandem nymph rig—a big rubber legged wolly bugger and a larger stone fly nymph was the ticket that day. 

We've got a rubber legged wolly bugger here and a large selection of nymphs online here.

We only fished for about 3-4 hours, but between two of us, we caught plenty of fish. Sunday was amazing, I have a couple good friends that I get to fish with every few years. One of them lives in Ireland, but he and his dad were able to get out with me in the drift boat this past week. 

We killed it! They had very sore arms at the end of the day.  Again, short tandem nymph rig or a large Chernobyl or chubby with a long dropper was the ticket.  We lost count of the fish. Oddly enough, we did not get many takes on the big dry, but couldn't keep them off the big stone dropper.  

We played leap frog with a couple of guides from Missoula who seemed to be doing as good as us—judged by the hoots and hollers we could hear every 10 minutes or so.  It was a fantastic day.  

But my friend from Ireland had the big heart breaker towards the end of the day… things had slowed down action-wise near the end of the float, when we got a bit complacent.  

If you need tippet or leaders, then click here.

My friend threw his nymph rig into a very fast edge in a big swirling hydraulic and had a huge take. I believe we 3 simultaneously said the same swear word when this massive fish came out of the water.  

Chuck did his best to get control of his line while I barked orders off the oars, but it was over as fast as it started.  Chuck did his best to strip line in on the fish as it ran at us, but to no avail. We took a breather, and a moment of silence. We cracked a new beer, and even though we lost that last one, I still think that was a good end to an awesome day.  

As the old saying still rings true, "it’s better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all," seemed to be the theme of our discussion on the way home.  

Want to see how the CDA River is doing?

But regardless of losing "Walter," I think we all went to bed very easy that evening and had dreams of the dozens of fish that were caught and one rather large one... yes.... that got away.  

But the Clark fork will be fishing very well, in the days to come, so get out and get it while it’s good.