Despite the winter storm warning and better judgement, we decided to brave the weather and fish the Missouri. It was frigid to say the least, I’m not sure if it ever got over freezing. The good news was we only saw 3 or 4 other boats on the water and a handful of wade fisherman. Another good thing was the blanket baetis hatch in the late afternoon. The bugs definitely took their sweet old time to show up, finally around 3:00 we saw fish starting to key in on baetis emergers. By 4:30 the flats and tailouts were absolutely boiling with risers, confirming that the “Mighty MO” is indeed one of the best dry fly rivers in the state. It was literally as good as it gets for BWO’s, as long as you could handle the cold that is. We caught fish on every baetis pattern we tried, the key seemed to be a dead drift. The fish didn’t seem to mind 4X tippet although 5X got more eats. The streamer bite was slow that day but we managed to land a few and moved a big chromer. Hank said the streamer bite was better the day before.