Fly of the Week #14- Campbell's Popping Bugger - PLUS Yakima River Update

Heat and Wind. With the exception of today, it's cool and cloudy for some reason, we have been inundated with 90's and above.  I have not personally seen 100, but I am sure someone has.  Yesterday was one of the windiest days of this summer, and the reason we have cloudy and cool today.  Not the best day to be on the water.  When the temperatures get really hot, and the sun beats down on the river, well, the trout go crepuscular mostly.  Crepuscular being a diurnal active period at dawn and/or dusk.  You can still land fish mid day, but there are certainly slow periods.   It's really fun fishing at dusk and last week we had a great evening float on the river.  However, change is always good, especially when it puts the angling family onto boat loads of fun!

Enter Banks Lake bass.  This weekend I had the opportunity to travel over to Banks and get into some truly epic Smallmouth Bass and Walleye fishing.  The Walleye fishing was slow and they are not very good fly fishing targets, as trolling crank baits is the norm.  However, top water bass with poppers was just unreal, stellar even.  Again, mornings and evenings, casting up into rocks, rip rap, any structure of the rocky type.  We fished in 30 feet of water, casting up into 5 to 6 feet of water with the poppers.   As soon as the poppers hit the water, fish would engulf them.  Very seldom was the popper on the water for more than 30 seconds before the fish took interest.


Campbell's Popping Bugger
Brown/Yellow, Chartreuse, White/Red


Hook: Dai-Riki #810 size 2-6
Thread: Color to match body- 3/0
Tail: marabou and some flash
Body: Rubber legs out of top, with Krystal Pearl Chinelle
Hackle: Hen to match color you are tying
Front body: Round foam discs in various colors as seen in pictures- I believe they are two connected round discs that are lashed on and then glued together.
Legs: Optional- round rubber legs inserted thru body to add more movement

FLY OF THE WEEK	PRICE	ADD TO CART
Popping Bugger- Chart. #4	$6.50 PER FLY
Popping Bugger- White #4	$6.50 PER FLY
Popping Bugger- Brown/Ylw #4	$6.50 PER FLY

Yakima River Report

The headline should be- Cooler Weather Ahead, Great Fishing in Store.  However, the fishing has been consistently good and last week Steve, Nathan, a friend of Nathan's and I (Joe) fished the upper farmlands and it was quite productive.  One of the best ways to burn off that post work day stress is an evening float on the Yakima.  We had good numbers of Rainbow and Cutthroat during our 2 hour float and a lot of missed strikes, refusals and otherwise aggressive fish. Orange and purple flies worked best, but I don't think the evening bite is really a color game, but more silhouette biased.   Having big, busy flies that have tempting silhouettes will produce more fish and better fish.  I tried some smaller Gypsy Kings, but the fish wanted big.  The flies we fished were in the 8 range and maybe some 6's.  

The nice thing about the Yakima is that it is mostly insulated from the temperature swings that a lot of rivers are effected by.  Our flows are stable, albeit unnaturally high in summer, due to the three reservoirs that control the watershed and provide for irrigation in the lower system.  The "Flip-Flop" is not a political term here, but a Bureau of Reclamation event that switches the high irrigation flows from the upper Yakima System to the Naches/Tieton System to feed the farm lands of the lower Yakima valley.  Please stop by the shop to get the latest news and updates and check out the expansion!

WBFC Pro-Staff
Joe