Myself, along with Erik and Jon from the shop recently made a trip to the Bighorn River for a little weekend getaway. Departing at 5pm after work on Friday -with plans to return back to Denver on Sunday night- didn't exactly leave time on our side. Either way, Jon had never fished the Bighorn and Erik hadn't been there in nearly 10 years. We figured as long as we abided to the 'don't spend more hours in the car than you do fishing' motto that Geirach once penned in one of his books, we decided the trip made sense.

We arrived in Ft. Smith at around 1:30 am and with two days and 15 hours of fishing that needed to be accomplished, we definitely skipped out on our recommended 8 hours of sleep that first night. On second thought, that also applied to night 2 (but for slightly different reasons...you get the idea).

We floated Afterbay to Bighorn on day 1 and within 4 casts of the boat ramp, Jon was hooked into a nice brown on a streamer. With the sun shining bright and few clouds around to hinder visability, the streamer bite was on. Or perhaps I should say, the "streamer chase" was on. We watched countless fish rocket out of their holds, chase down our streamers, only to shortly thereafter play the retreat game. While not every fish managed to avoid getting a new size 6 lip ring, the action slowed enough that we decided to stop and wade a few riffles with our nymph rigs. In typical Bighorn fashion, nymphing remained strong with worms, zebra midges, ray charles and small baetis patterns bringing plenty of fish to hand.

As is always the case on fishing trips, it seemed like we were back in my truck headed south in a blink of an eye. Tired but equally fired-up on two days of quality trout fishing catching, the weekend was deemed a unanimous success in every sense of the word. Don't believe me? Take a quick scroll through the pictures below for further proof.