Playing the Back 9

For our last day on the ranch, we decided to play close to "home." In all my previous visits to see Brett at the HF Bar, I'd yet to fish the ranch property. With miles of classic mountain trout water on two forks of Rock Creek, there's plenty of exploring to do. So we had a leisurely breakfast at the clubhouse, jumped in the cart and headed out to play the back 9.

We didn't get far though. Headed up the mountain on a 4-wheel drive road we passed two riders leading four horses... not a good sign. To make a long story short, turns out 73 year-old Bronco (yes, the riders name was Bronco) had gone down and banged himself up pretty good. Luckily, our friend Alex is a volunteer firefighter and EMT, a good guy to have on the scene. We administered a little wilderness first aid and executed a pretty clean evacuation, delivering Bronco to the ambulance that'd been called for him. Despite the broken hip, and wrist, and forehead contusion, I have a feeling Bronco will be back in the saddle again at some point.

Since we'd done our good deeds for the day, we decided it'd be alright to have a beer and go fishin'. So we did...

The next day we'd hit the road in the direction of Victor, ID where The South Fork of the Snake waited for us. The question was, could we find some trout inbetween...