Big Water with BlueLine Co.
The second half of our annual Western odyssey featured bigger water with hopes of bigger fish. Our success on the small stream cutthroat had served to whet our appetites and we hoped to convert our high spirits into some fish in the net. Luckily, we found a few good ones and we all got to explore some new water while we were at it! We made camp a couple of miles downriver from Palisades dam as we had heard positive reports of cool water and willing fish and what with the extreme heat out West, we weren’t blessed with an abundance of options. As it was, the South Fork of the Snake treated us well and we all got to bend some rods.
The action started early for Collin and I as, while casually surveying the soft water near the boat ramp, fish began rising steadily all around the dock. We quickly regrouped, grabbed our rods, rigged up and raced back to the river in the last of the failing light. We were unsure of how to match the nearly invisible hatch but through some experimentation discovered some flies that the fish were happy to pursue! I fished from about 8:30 until around 11:00 PM. I kept telling myself that I would stop fishing as soon as I went five consecutive casts without getting a hit, the fish though, just wanted to keep playing!
We started off throwing dries downstream at rising fish. As we lost our light and could no longer see the rises, I began to quarter my casts into the current while stripping them back once they had tightened out below me. This proved to be an extremely effective tactic as I fooled cutthroat, rainbow and cutbow trout in my ‘bonus time’. The largest fish probably went 16 or 17 inches, by no means massive but surely a lot of fun to tussle with in the deep, fast current that the fish were using to their fullest advantage. I hooked a couple of mystery fish as well that ripped line off my reel before coming unpinned, exciting if still disappointing! One of the keys to success from this night’s fishing was provided by Blue Line in the form of their micro swivels. I was blind-fishing a large dry with a tiny RS2 dropper sometimes forced to make longer casts in the opaque darkness and not knowing whether my flies were tangled. They had been every few casts until I tied on the nearly-weightless swivel and saved myself the headache of needing to retie again and again with the aid of my headlamp while losing precious time fishing the hatch.
The next morning we partook in gas station breakfast burritos waiting for the cool morning to warm some. Despite the extreme mid-day heat it was hovering near 50 degrees by the river in the early morning. We launched Adam’s Sotar and proceeded to explore a stretch of river that was unknown to all of us. The first hour and a half or so were slow as the temperatures had really not woken any of the fish up yet. The action began to pick up though in the mid-morning and we began to pick some fish off the banks with Chubby Chernobyls and various hopper patterns. The Chubby Chernobyl was undoubtedly the foam pattern of the week for us. Simple to tie and with infinite iterations and customizations, you can tailor this fly to meet your exact needs. If you ever want to tie this pattern yourself be sure to check out Blue Line’s video on how they tie this pattern (Chubby Chernobyl Tying Tutorial) . Fishing 6 weights almost exclusively, we felt we had the muscle to pull bigger fish out of the indomitable current of the mighty South Fork of the Snake.
I lost a quality fish that came up and ate my Chubby when I made the amateur mistake of rushing to put the fish on the reel and losing tension with my stripping hand. This had clearly been a good fish and it was disappointing to miss her. Honestly though, I wasn’t too terribly upset with myself in the moment. Last night had given me more than I could have asked for and at least in the moment I was happy to just be with good company in an amazing place. That wouldn’t last of course and I was pulled from casual reverie by thoughts of redemption. This didn’t take long and we were cruising past a cobble island when a minute eddy made itself apparent to me. I threw my hopper pattern tight to this soft water and not a second elapsed before the bony lips of a large cutthroat trout emerged around my fly to drag it to the depths, fish on! This male cutthroat pulled line and put on a great little fight before being brought to bear. Maybe not a monster to fishermen blessed with more access to the mountain West’s iconic native species, but this was undoubtedly my largest cutthroat ever to this point! I reveled in his unique, fine-spotted markings and made sure to keep him healthy and wet with Collin and Adam snapping some quick, quality photos. As I bent to release this fish, a final violent splash from his caudal tail severed our connection and sent him on his way.
The mid to late morning felt much the same as this last few minutes of action. Intermittent eats kept us on our toes and the occasional rising fish gave us individuals to target and an idea of where others may be sitting. It wasn’t long before Adam had tucked us in a bankside channel drained by several cobbled slews. We spotted a rising fish or two and the raft was in perfect position for Collin in the front to present his hoppers beneath the brush where we had seen the dimples disturbing the surface. A quick cast was followed by a quicker eat and Collin had a fish that was the perfect mirror to mine! Adam though (in his trademark irreverent humor), saw it differently and remarked (like the day prior) that this fish was “identical to mine, only slightly larger”. I’m not sure about that and, as I’m the one writing this, we’ll say that the fish were in fact identical in size to the last millimeter! This chunky cutthroat put a great bend in the rod and had us all excited for what lay around the next bend. Fishing was good if not quite great and we were enjoying a fantastic time on the water. We picked off some smaller rainbows and hybrids as well as the morning wore on and anytime we decided to chuck a heavy nymph rig we couldn’t help but pull some large whitefish from the bottom as well.
We repasted under great cliffs housing thousands of swallows and grasshoppers, the former devouring the latter every time they could discover them, and discussed our thoughts on the great issues of our time; extreme heat waves out west, whether heavier gauge nymph and streamer hooks served for better-fishing hopper patterns, the superiority of In N Out cheeseburgers and other great issues of the same ilk. As the sun rose ever higher the fishing may have slowed some but our spirits were undiminished.
The next curiosity we found on the river came directly below a waterfall in a large eddy that the associated cliffs helped create. There was a substantial foam and scum slick here and it seemed to be collecting all matter of detritus and food sources for trout that were finning along the surface seemingly everywhere in the backwater. With a heroic exertion from Adam we managed to backrow back into position, fighting the main force of the current to ease our way back into the eddy where we could enjoy leisurely shots at these large fish. I quickly managed a 17 or 18 inch Cutthroat or hybrid that now took the place of my previous record which had only managed to stand some few hours. For the next hour or so we sat here in this unique spot and sight cast to cruising fish. We all caught something as Collin caught some big cutthroat, I caught a small Brown and Adam caught some species of chub or shiner haha!
In the last few miles of our float we pushed through some promising water in order to make it off the water at a reasonable time. We missed a few more willing fish, saw a few moose and generally just soaked in the experience while eagerly anticipating a hot dinner.
While grabbing some flies, food and beverages from a local general store and fly shop, Collin and I couldn’t help but to take a moment and wander down to the spring creek meandering just 75 feet from the pavement. Lo and behold, cutthroat everywhere! We grabbed my 4 weight and tied on an ant to see if we could coax some fish into eating despite the gin clear water and the sun directly overhead. It took just a couple of casts and a refusal or two for me to connect with a handsome seven inch native, awesome! Collin though, didn’t have the same luck as what I had experienced. We tried plenty of flies and worked up and down the 15 foot wide creek but, despite some rises, couldn’t seal the deal with the wily little salmonids. Dinner was a relaxing affair as we enjoyed a rustic, local bar with the sweetest of all modern conveniences, air conditioning.
All day I had been thinking about fishing the dock as we had the previous evening. This time I was prepared for the excellent fishing and I wanted to enjoy every moment afforded to me. I was rigged and ready around 8:30 and had only to wait a few minutes for some ‘worm drowners’ to vacate the dock allowing us room to start casting. Just like last night, fish began to rise everywhere. Some trout sharked across the surface with their backs breaking the water. Others leapt violently from the water in hopes of devouring their prey. I started by casting directly above rising fish and drifting into them. If they opted not to play, then I would quarter my cast downstream and past them, swinging my dry flies past and then retrieving them slowly at the end of my drift. Both methods were effective and I managed another half dozen fish in the net before 11:30 when the rises began to peter out. The average fish tonight was a 14 inch rainbow but we caught multiple cutthroat as well that were nearly the size as any we caught during the float. This was an amazing experience for me and I was so glad to have gotten multiple shots at this twilight and nighttime action.
Our second full day float got off to a more leisurely start as we hadn’t had much luck until the sun had really begun to rise. From the get-go we saw thousands of Yellow Sally’s hatching but just not a ton of fish rising. We did hit a few riffles where a mixed hatch of the Sally’s and a few smaller bugs had the fishing coming up to eat. The wind was an issue this day and only got worse as the sun grew higher in the sky. Heavy gust made it difficult to tuck our double hopper flies close to the bank so we used some of Bluelines micro swivels and custom leaders to keep wind knots and tangles to a minimum. We hooked and released a few of these fish but just didn’t have quite enough time to get dialed in on them as we needed to get Collin back to Salt Lake in time for his flight that evening. Hoppers, various Sally imitations and a concoction of Adam’s he calls the Hudson Caddis were our tickets for the day. Hopefully with enough positive hype around the Hudson Caddis we can convince him to start producing these for the masses so that we can revamp our dry fly boxes around them. He ties them in a few colors and sizes and they surprisingly imitate a wide variety of dries depending on how you present them and dress them. Best of all maybe, due to their materials they will stay buoyant all day with just a little bit of floatant reapplied periodically. It seemed like almost every fish that didn’t want a big foam Chernobyl wanted one of these do-it-all dries.
We hit on our best success today outside of the main river channel. Fishing the smaller braids branching off from the river we found ourselves in more intimate environs that weren’t quite so overwhelming as the mighty South Fork. Riffles and quicker water seemed to be the hot ticket of the day and I managed a fat 16 inch cuttie on a Royal Wulff that was fairly mangled already by the plethora of native brookies it had already caught back East. Moments later, and beginning to feel almost cliché, Collin stuck an “identical fish, only a bit bigger”, geez! His came out of extremely tight and fast water where we were forced to land the fish quickly so as not to lose it in thick log jams just downstream. Some smaller cutthroat and rainbows nearly ended the day for us before jokes of “boat ramp brown trout” manifested into a small wild brown actually in our net! Another great day with Adam and another successful hajj to the Holy Waters of the American West.
