SoFo Reunion

Our rendezvous with the South Fork had been a long time coming. It'd been almost two years since I'd last plied her waters and she'd been haunting me. For those unfamiliar with the area, the South Fork comes about something like this: The Snake River begins its journey in Yellowstone National Park, winds Southwest through Jackson hole and eventually empties into Palisades Reservoir, which straddles the border of Wyoming and Idaho. When the river emerges below Palisades Dam, it changes monikers and is henceforth known as the South Fork of the Snake. It's a broad, powerful body of water, flowing well in excess of 10,000 cubic feet per second for much of the spring and summer. It is widely considered one of the finest trout fisheries in the West; average fish size is strong and hatches are the stuff of legend. It is home to healthy populations of Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat, Yellowstone Cutthroat, Rainbows and Browns, and to some of my finest fishing memories.

I can't begin to explain how many day dreams I had about that river during my hiatus. She doesn't always give it up easy but when she decides to dance, you had better bring your tap shoes because the action can be fast and furious. On this day though she played her cards close to the chest. The high flows of early summer, rumor had it, had put off the bugs and put a serious damper on the normally stellar dry fly fishing. We managed a few fish on both streamers and nymphs, including the first cutty of the trip, but we'd seen only a shadow of the rivers true character.

As much as I truly enjoyed being back on the Southy despite the unremarkable fishing, it created a creeping angst leading up to the last two fishing days of the trip. We'd come to Idaho to catch cutthroat on dry flies and we'd have to figure out just where that was going to happen over the next 48 hours. Admittedly, a tough problem to have.

Runnin' and Gunnin'

After 4 days and 5 nights in the Big Horns it was time for a travel day. When we'd mapped out our trip over 8 months ago we'd planned to split our time between North Central Wyoming and Eastern Idaho. While it was tough to leave the ranch, we'd about outlasted our welcome and it was time for the second leg of the journey.

But neither of us were really all that willing to sacrifice a day of fishing by spending it behind a windshield. We pored over maps and tried to gather information, but the only conclusion we could come up with was that there was several hundred miles and a whole lot of blue lines between point A and point B. So we loaded up the truck and hit the road with plans to explore any roadside ditch, creek, pond or river we came across.

It doesn't take long to find water in the mountains, and we were casting to rising fish shortly after the first beams of light glistened off the surface of a creek whose name we wouldn't bother figuring out until later.

Tough to beat a rainbow at sunrise.

We'd gotten a quick fix but still had a long way to go, so we cut the fun short and jumped back in the car, leaving the rods rigged. We didn't get far.

As we rounded a turn we spotted an alpine lake adjacent to the highway. We talked about blowing past it but decided it was worth a few casts. We pulled up to the lakes' edge and jumped out, leaving the car running, to see if we could drum up a couple of fish and cross another body of water off the "list." As we approached the edge of the lake I spotted a tiny feeder stream on the Northeast bank. I hadn't even bothered to put my flip flops on, but curiosity got the better of me. So in my bare feet I began walking upstream to see if there was any water worth casting to.

Two hours later, I returned to the car with cold, sore, scraped-up feet just in time to beat the hail storm that came rolling in.

So we kept truckin'. In short order we were running parallell to another blue line. We pulled over. Alex said he was going to go check it out. I said I'd wait in the car. "Come get me if you find something."

5 minutes went by. 10 minutes went by... 15. I didn't need to hear it from Alex to know what was going on; I grabbed my rod and headed down to find him.

The next few hours were almost surreal. We engaged in a heated game of tag with a massive thunderstorm as we chased trout down the mountain. Plunge pool after plunge pool, pocket after pocket, run after run. It seemd everywhere we put a dry fly there was a fat, vibrantly colored 10-13 inch trout waiting to eat it. A few were better than that.

Even the ditches produced fish.

If you could show them a fly (often no easy task) they'd eat it.

Finally the road and river parted ways and we put pedal to floor in an effort to make up some miles. We'd end up hitting a few more creeks before dusk stole the day from us, but it'd been a memorable one long before the sun set behind the Tetons. We made it to Victor just in time to tie on a good buzz at the Timberline Bar and would sleep well that night while the South Fork of the Snake waited for us.

Procrastinating

I know, you're waiting on those western trout pics. well, I thought about staying inside today and blogging. But I went and dialed in the switch rod (and stung a hoard of hoovers) instead.

Intermission

I've been working on getting together the last few entries from our Western Trout Extravaganza, but decided to take a break today to stalk some Carpon. Brought my Old Lady's wheels with me and was rollin' in style.

Bagged a carp triple...

The Magna in all her glory...

So, thought that was all pretty cool, 'til I got home and saw the vid JFabes had sent me. Rediculous footage that makes me want to book a flight back to Mexico tomorrow...

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...