Well for those of you planning a trip to eastern Idaho and western Wyoming you might want to postpone your trip a few weeks. They have gotten tons of snow this way and the majority of the rivers look like chocolate milk. You can find some decent water clarity if you fish some of the tailwaters, but all of the freestones are unfishable. According to some of the locals this is the most snow they have seen in over twenty years. The weather forecast is projecting more snow this evening and through tomorrow. With all of the rain and snow it is going to be a late summer for fishing. People should expect great fishing in the rockies all the way through September. There shouldn't be any river closures this year due to low warm water.
With all off the freestone rivers being unfishable I have got one day in fishing the Blackfoot and then another fishing the South Fork of the Snake. The Blackfoot in Idaho is a little gem that not to many people know about. The Blackfoot is a tributary to the Snake River. The river doesn't boast a huge population of fish but the cutts and rainbows in there grow to large unhealthy proportions. For some reason they are short and fatt. The two times that I have fished the river it has resulted in some chubby specimans that are strong and full of fight. Well last week the fishing was pretty tuff with only about two feet of clarity. A fellow guide friend and I spent the whole day throwing streamers and we only managed to hook 7 fish. But 4 of the fish hooked were all 18''-20''. The great side about it was that I was able to get some fishing in before my busy season starts here this next weekend.
Monday I went and checked out the South Fork of the Snake. It was good to get back on this river after guiding it all last summer. For those of you who have not been here it is a must see for any fly fisherman. The bugs on the South Fork traditionally come off near the end of June so for the next couple of weeks we will be stairing at indicators in the riffles and throwing streamers on the banks. The fishing was good the other day with about 30 fish landed between two of us in about 5 hours of fishing. We decided to float from Palisades Dam down to the Lodge at Palisades Creek. The streamer bite looks like it is just getting started and the fishing with eggs and San Juans was pretty silly. The big fish of the day was a 21'' cutty that had the biggest shoulders I have ever seen on a cutthroat. It was probably a 5lb fish. At first I thought that I hooked a decent brown because it just stayed on the bottom and bull dogged me for about 5 minutes. To be honest I was thoroughly impressed that it didnt do its normal cutthroat roll and give up routine.
Just for some additional information. I have heard that the Henrys Fork is fishing. It should be any day now before those Salmon Flies come off on Henrys. That means we are about 2-3 weeks from having them come off on the South Fork. Get exicted because those big bugs will drive the most seasoned fly anglers crazy. I guess you could say that it is a hatch of a lifetime.
I hope this helps for those of you coming out this way in the next couple of weeks. I will be guiding out here through August and then I will be coming back to California for all of the famous egg bites. I guess you could call that California's hatch of a lifetime.
Fish Hard!
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