"Spearfish in town has been good," said Stephenson. "One of our guides, Jamie, lives up there and fishes it quite a bit. The fishing has been quite good. On average the fish are bigger in town than in the rest of the stream. It is a nice opportunity that not a lot of people are looking into."

Anglers can also visit the grounds of the D.C. Booth Historic Fish Hatchery in Spearfish. It is now run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and takes an interesting look at the history of trout stocking in the Rocky Mountains. There is a museum on the campus-like grounds, with an old hatchery train car, and even a hatchery boat used on Yellowstone Lake.

For equipment, small is usually best in the Black Hills.

"In April, things get better as far as dry-fly fishing," said Stephenson. "Blue-winged olives, midges, caddis -- all are hatching. Then a few small black stoneflies still around -- size 18 and 20 stoneflies. They are one of our most common stoneflies. They are below Pactola, up Spearfish Canyon and below Deerfield. For subsurface you use a small Black Copper John. On top, we end up using a couple different things -- you can cover them with black elk hair caddis. But we also use the Henryville Special."

For nymph patterns he likes include micro mayfly nymphs, glass bead midge larvae, Copper John, WD-40.

"There are a lot of smaller patterns that people use," said Stephenson. "There are a lot of different flies out there. But if you tie them yourself, you need to tie them sparse. They are slender. The average Pheasant Tail that people tie is way too fat. With midge patterns, there is not much to it. It is a slender little grub. It is some thread on a hook, and we like to add a glass bead."

Last year Stephenson was fishing 16 and 18 size flies during part of spring, but by summer it was size 20s clear down to size 24s.

"Most people we see out there are fishing flies that are too big on tippet which is too heavy," he said. "Use 6X tippet and try to get as close to size as possible -- 18 to 22 size dry flies. The closer you get to the size and shape of the bug, the more fish you are going to catch."

For a fly rod he prefers a 4-weight. "It is a perfect all-around size for the Black Hills," he says. "A lot of people will try to convince themselves they need a short rod, but we don't like anything much smaller than 8.5 feet. The reason being, if you limit the length of your rod, you also limit the ability to mend, roll cast, to lift the line off the water. And for a lot of our streams, that is a big disadvantage."