Me and Rich headed up to the foothills today to do a scouting trip. I've always been intrigued about the forks of the upper American, and after last year's failed attempt to fish the Silver Fork (we forgot to check if the Nat'l Forest roads were open) I was eager to try again. We started with the North Fork of the Middle Fork, which didn't pan out as well as we'd liked, a few small fish, but nothing to write home about.

Deciding to up our odds for bigger fish, we headed off the trib and down to the main stem Middle Fork below Oxbow Reservoir. Spent a few hours down there, I managed to hook six total, one that likely went twenty inches and spit the hook right before I netted him. Attached is a pic of a 14 incher I managed to land.

These fish were all over emergers on the downstream drift and swing. Hot flies for me were a Z-Wing Caddis emerger in green, and Otter's CDC midge emerger pattern in fire orange, which I tie with an antron wing instead of CDC wing.

All in all, a very cool fishery, with very pretty, healthy wild bows. It's a shame very little of it is accessible by wade anglers, though with catch and kill summer regs, it's probably a good thing. I'd love to do a few days of floating and fishing here, I hear tell the brownies in this stream get quite large....