Today was one of those days you dream about. Guides usually refer to it as Yesterday, in the phrase, "you should have been here yesterday. "
I'm not really much of a fish counter. In fact I usually discourage it, because it should not be the end all be all of how good of day on the river you have. But, after limping into port on Friday only fifteen fish to find a Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks surveyor at the take out logging fisherman's catch, I decided to keep count. For other guides, we caught this many fish (see picture below). 
We decided to fish a stretch in Paradise Valley. By lunch we had caught 8 fish on nymphs. While we were enjoying some Elk Sausage I had ground and stuffed a few days before, I began to notice drakes starting to come off.
As we pulled across the river after we ate, I noticed a pocket of cutthroats, becoming active. We stowed the nymph rods and broke out the dries. From 1:15 until about 4:30 we fished a single size 10 parachute adams. It is about as perfect of a dry as you can ask for. It's large and easy to see, floats well, and is not so big that fish miss it. Although a few did.
We had an exciting afternoon with many many fish up. At 4:30, Caddis started to pop and we switched to a #14 elk hair caddis. Made from the same hair as the elk we ate for lunch.
More great dry fly fishing and by 6:30, when the wind came up. We decided to ruin a perfect day by fighting with the wind. As I rowed to the take out, I was hoping to see the Surveyor to let her know about our day. Ray asked what our total was. 
"Remember we had 8 at Lunch," I said. I counted up the afternoon harvest on my fly patch and announced the total of 44 fish. Ray said "damn." sort of disappointed.
"What," I protested.
"Had I of known, I would have caught six more for the even Fifty," he said.
We had to live with 44.
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