OK, many decent points made in previous posts. I'll summarize with this.....
Ryan has a great point. If you aren't willing to be flexible, you greatly reduce your chances. What if you can see the fish chasing caddis that are swimming up but won't touch an adult on the surface. You go down to them or go fishless.
VC's post said that the fish won't feed on top this time of year in dirty water. I don't know a better response to that other than WRONG. Took fish on #20 sulphur emergers last year when the visibility was virtually zero and the river was filled with weed clumps and algae. I floated for 2 miles bouncing off the banks taking a nap when my buddy called and said are you seeing all of the rising fish? I didn't want to fish with the water that dirty. Found a pod of 5...caught 4 of them and they were all 19"-22" and then moved down river to a different pool where we found another pod and caught all 6 of them and 2 of the fish taped 22".
Troy,
You will learn that just about anything is possible on that river system at any given time. You could have great hatches and not a fish to be found rising. The guy 500 yards away doesn't have any bugs but is stacking up fish like cord wood.
Muddy conditions might not be best for the fish to see the bugs but that also swings things in your favor. You may need to search a little harder to find the risers but the big boys feel safe in the dirty water and will feed during the day on little stuff. In 'section A' of the river, you might see sulphurs every day at 9:30am. You move to 'section B' and the sulphurs might run from 11 - 3pm and be mixed with some caddis. 'section C' doesn't get much of a daytime sulphur hatch but has a bunch of caddis and Iso popping during the day. Then in the evening....sulphurs, stenos, olives and spinners. What you see will be determined by where you are. If you have dirty water and are searching by blind casting on the shady areas...toss them a #10 iso with a yellow soft hackle hanging 8" under it. Take a picture of what the result is.
It could suck, it could be great...you never know. The one thing I'm sure of is sitting at home won't catch fish. No matter what you get handed, try to learn and observe. You might walk up to a pool, look for 15 seconds and then move on. If you sit for 30 minutes, you all of the sudden see the far bank is lined up fish after fish sipping on sulphur cripples. Get up there and have some fun.
As for flows and releases, good luck trying to make sense out of the flow pattern. It's been pretty steady for a while, but the temps below Buckingham are starting to warm which may or may not result in an additional amount being let out. Pretty heavy rains might hit the area. The lakes are low enough that they shouldn't spill or wouldn't spill for a day or so (valley runoff needs to reach the lake). Based on predicted rainfall, they may or may not blow water out of the lake in the next 2 days. I wouldn't bet on that though.
