Black Canyon 4/9/11

Be very careful when fishing Black Canyon. Not only was the fishing poor and the water off color but around 1:00 I got a text message from another guy that was fishing down there. They had released an extreme amount of water through the dam at about noon. He was out in the river standing on a rock and very quickly the rock was under water. They do weird things with that river and while they do it fishes very poorly and can become very dangerous. Check the Pacificorp website before you leave to check stream flows. If the flow is more than 100 CFS, don't bother. I don't know where I will be fishing in the coming weeks, but there are a few local creeks that are spring fed that should be pretty good. Utah folks will wait for Chesterfield to open up and I will wait for 24 Mile reservoir. Hopefully the Portneuf will blow out soon leaving the river much cleaner and the fishermen much happier.

Fishing Report March, 4 2011

Cold and windy between Lava and Mike's. Took my boy out to the river and only saw one fish. Water color and clarity were very poor even with the low flows. Very little bug activity, I saw a few midges coming off about 3:00 but no fish moving, not even in the foam lines where the usually hand out. Next time I think I will fish higher even if I have to walk some to get there. Some good reports up toward Croney's but will have to check that out another day. Blue wings should start moving in the next month or so especially if we get some 50 degree days. I will be stocking the box with small pheasant tails, emergers, cripples and spent wings waiting for the spring action to begin. It should be really fun in the next month or so as long as the flows come down a little.

Fishing Report Jan. 29, 2011

Idaho has changed stream seasons and regulations. Check them out at http://idahofishandgame.org. The changes are wonderful and many of the streams that have previously been closed are open under catch and release regulations.

I have recently fished "chalkstream" and have picked up good numbers of fish on the surface and fishing nymphs and streamers. The water is a little off color but there are good numbers of fish finding midges in the foam lines, and the fish seem to be active subsurface. Micro leeches, wooly buggers in purple and olive and the green bomb have all picked up good numbers of fish. Fish seemed to be more active closer to town.

Fishing Report 6-22-10

There are a few reports coming from the Portneuf of good hatches of PMD's and some good fish being found. Water levels are slowly declining and clarity on the upper river is improving. Most of the area creeks are finishing their runoff stages and are fishing well. I have fished Toponce, Eight-mile and Georgetown creek in the last week or so with good success in each of them. The fish don't seem to care much what you throw at them as long as it is small and dry. Water temperatures are still cold right now, this might be the best it gets on some of the creeks as water temperatures will surely increase.

Fishing Report 6-8-2010

I have really enjoyed trying to find new water to fish when the streams are turbulent. I have found some success in the very top end of some of my favorite creeks. I also recently discovered a new stream near Pocatello with some monster browns in it, it was extremely brushy but fished very well in the deep holes drifting a San Juan. The Portneuf is off-color and high with very little bug activity. I would have to rate it at a double ghaaagh, right now. The very top of Toponce fished very well. Monday, I fished Paul's reservoir near the Montana line with Tobee and had a great time even though the catching was slow. Tobee taught me a new leech pattern that apparently is prettier than it is useful, but should be a very productive pattern.

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

After a very long 2 years of working on a Master's degree it is finally finished. It is mostly with disgust that I even look at the computer after being attached to it at the wrists for such a period of time, but I am now ready to continue in the blogosphere. This is the weekend that we all wait for; the weekend when creeks, rivers and streams open in Idaho yet are mostly too high and cloudy to fish. There are a few secret places however that seem to clear up and remain fish-able in the early season. These out of the way places are held dear to my heart because they are so few and far between.

Since August 2009 I have fished a grand total of 5 times and at no time did I feel like any of those trips were noteworthy. Now I enter the game again with nearly three months until school starts again and life gets turned on its head. Memorial day weekend is a time when we can reflect and honor those that have served. It also happens to be the weekend I get to call myself a fisherman again. I hope I can keep my priorities straight.

Bear River 1/30/2010

I am back in the game. It seems like forever since I have fished, because it has been. One of the saddest events of my life happened on Halloween, 2009. While on a family outing to the creek, I fished a little and played with the kids we all had a great time. About a week later I got done with school and was going to head to the river for one last hurrah, and realized that I must have left my chest pack up at the creek that fateful Halloween day. Long story short it has taken some time to replace even a portion of what I used to carry in that bag, and I now have just enough to get back in the game.

I have fished Black Canyon twice this winter both times with encouraging success. For the most part the fish were taking midges both times that I have been in the canyon. This has been good for me because my midge fishing was something that really needed some work. Today was beautiful, the temperature was cold but the fish were very active. In an attempt to see what the fish really wanted to eat I fished nymphs, streamers and midges. The winner of the day by a long shot was a #16-20 Griffiths gnat.

Portneuf River Report 9/7/2009

Water Color: Very Good

Water Quality: Excellent

Water Temp: Cooler than last week 55 degrees

Weather: 75 degrees, windy, partly cloudy

Time: 4:30-6:30

Bugs: Hoppers, Hoppers and Hoppers

Flies: Daves Hopper, Parachute Hopper, Pheasant Tail droppers

The Portneuf fished well today with good numbers of large fish eating hoppers and droppers. I hooked up more on the dropper than the hopper, but the action will only get better from here. I really think that as the forecast is supposed to be cooler at nights that the fish will get very active. The larger fish are really starting to move. This may be the best that it gets until the river closes.

Portneuf River Report 8/29/2009

Water Carity: fair

Water Temp: unknown, but warm still

Weather: Mostly cloudy 65 degrees.

Time: 9:00-11:00

Bugs: Caddis, small mayflies (not many), grasshoppers.

Not many fish moving this morning on the River but it is beginning to show signs of life. I hooked into one really nice fish and saw a handful of others working. The water quality is getting much better. The banks of the river were swarming with hoppers by 11:00 but fish are still not keying on them. We need some colder nights in order to really start the fish on the hunt. My guess is that due to the nice weather and warm nights that the fish are active at night. I would be interested to fish the Portneuf at night and find out if the big boys more active in the warm months. I expect the quality of the fishing on the river to change dramatically in the next few weeks.

Blackfoot River Report

Water off color

Air temp: 60

Bug activity: some PMD's, very minimal.

Usually the Blackfoot River is low and clear this time of year, but this has been anything but a normal year. Today the Blackfoot was still off color and running a little high. The narrows is really the place to be as the water that is usually too low to fish is actually quite nice right now. There were good numbers of active fish closer to the National Forest boundary on the west end of the river. I found some really nice fish in this section, they were feeding just subsurface on what looked like emerging PMD's. I really would expect for the river to clear a little more in the next few weeks and for the fish to get really active as the nights get colder and the hoppers get bigger.

Portneuf River Report

I fished the upper Portneuf this morning and let's just say it was really crappy. Water clarity is poor and the flows are still high. I have always held that the Portneuf is a morning fishery so stumbled out of bed this morning in great anticipation. At first glance the river looked good so I walked over the hill to one of my favorite stretches. The one angry bull that bellowed at me from the other side of the fence was the most excitement I had all morning. Not a fish in site, not a rise, not a wake nothing. There were good numbers of caddis hatching so that may prove promising for the future. On another note the stretch of the river that I was fishing usually has a nice gravelly bottom, this for the most part there is mud up to your knees, the river didn't blow out this year like it usually does in the spring so I think all the sediments just piled up. I really do think that the river will start fishing well when the farmers turn off their water, but it may be until the middle of August til it is ready. I'll keep posting.

Fish Pics

I got to take a trip with Nate to some creeks in the Columbia Gorge fishing some native redsides, later we went exploring a little creek on Mt. Hood. We found some great coastal cutts. Not huge but really nice fish for a creek this size; with small rods and fast water it really made for some exciting action.

A really nice coastal cutt with all of the heavy spotting.

Most of the water on the creek was very fast

Here are some pictures from a creek near the Continental Divide that we found. We don't really know the name of it but it was somewhere near Monida. Also are a few random Portneuf pictures that I liked and some from Birch Creek, on the highway between Terreton, Idaho and Salmon, Idaho.

Portneuf at Dusk

Todd with a nice Birch Creek brookie

An Average No Tell 'um Creek Brookie

That's right we worm fished the heck out of those brookies, mostly because we found a few really nice cutts in the same stream and wanted the brookies gone. . .yep we ate 'em.

I've been everywhere...man

I feel like that old Johnny Cash song, I really have been all over the great northwest in the last three weeks and have had a chance to fish nearly everywhere that I went. The first leg of my trip was to Northern Idaho where I fished for native cutthroats on some miniscule streams and some stocked rainbows and brookies on some bigger water. Then it was off to Portland Oregon. I fished with Nate, and we had a great time exploring some less traveled creeks in the Columbia Gorge. We found some really beautiful native redband trout in the gorge streams travlelling east toward Hood River. We then worked our way around Mt. Hood where on the eastern side we fished Cold Springs Creek and found a slough of native coastal cutthroat (at least that's what I think they are after looking at Cutthroat Stalkers cutthroat ID page). Later we fished a very small tailwater to a crappy looking reservoir and caught some brookies. The highlight of the trip for sure was the small, very fast water of Cold Springs Creek catching those little and sometimes not so little cutts. Now I am back in Southeast Idaho and have found myself doing some reclamation, I mean brook trout extermination, work on a little stream north of Dubois, Idaho almost to the continental divide and Wyoming border. We found some really nice cutthroat in the small stream and also found that if we fished worms in the creek we could catch lots of really big (10-14 in) brook trout. So the three amigos harvested about 60 brookies from the stream in two days and had a great time doing it. We also fished a little reservior filled with cutthroat called Paul's Reservoir near the Idaho/Montana border. Finally yesterday, I got to fish one of my all time favorite "fun water" at Birch Creek. Really, it turned out to be much more than we expected when we found a great stonefly hatch on the creek and got to fish huge flies to voracious fish. Tobee and I fished a stretch of the creek .3 miles long and landed over 100 fish in three hours. There is a reason Birch Creek is popular, I'm just glad to be able to fish some places that not many people fish. I have some great pictures but don't have them downloaded yet so those will come in the future.

June 10, 2009

Fished a few places on Toponce Creek this afternoon and really had a pretty good time. Fish larger than expected have moved out of the mainstem of the creek to the softer water of the South Fork. I fished three areas of the S.F., the extreme upper only producing a few small cutts, the middle was the best and actually had a great mayfly hatch, and the extreme lower which had picked up more water and the flows were just a little too high. It was about 50 degrees and cloudy today which really aided all the bug action. In the stretches of faster water I ran some weighted nymphs with some good success and in the slower water with rising fish I fished dries. I found one hole where there were probably 10-20 fish sipping adult mayflies and I automatically thought it would be like shooting fish in barrell. An hour later I had finally found the right pattern and landed about 10 of those fish, but I had to clear out my box to get it done. Talked to a friend of mine that has fished a few more things and according to him the Bear River is terrible right now, probably due to the "recreational flows" for kayakers and rafters. The Portneuf is high right now but fish can still be taken if you don't mind getting out the lead and dredging for them. 8 mile Creek near Soda Springs is high but fishable. Pebble Creek is the same. In addition, I drove through Yellowstone Park the other day and the park waters are realy fishable right now. Here are some pictures of our Yellowstone trip just to spice up the blog a little.

Spring fishing report

I have had the opportunity in the last week to travel the area and check on the condition of some of the water. In general most Caribou County streams are still too high to fish with a few exceptions. The Portneuf River flows are at good levels and the water clarity is surprisingly good. The river bottom is exceptionally muddy this year, probably due to the low spring runoff that usually blows out the river. I went to only one spot on the Portneuf that usually holds good numbers of fish and did not even see a fish, so I need to do more exploring. The very top of the South Fork of Toponce Creek fished well in the beaver dams. I caught two very small cutthroat yesterday out of 24 mile creek, but watch out for the mosquitos. Ledge creek has some great brook trout fishing. I checked out a friends recommendation in Franklin County this week also and found the water looking in pretty good shape. I believe they call this water the West Fork of the Bear River. I will be out of town for the next week but it looks like flows are already on the downhill slide and that things should be pretty normal by the second or third week of June this year.

Life is Crazy Busy

School is now out and track season is over. It is time to get back to the blog. I really have not blogged because I have not fished in nearly two months. A new baby, sports seasons etc.... I will now hope to do better. Tomorrow is the opener and the upper Portneuf and some of the surrounding streams look pretty good. I plan to check them out tomorrow and report. If there is still anyone out there who reads this blog stick with me, it will get better. Wish  me luck on the opener. 

Great February Dry Fly Fishing

I was looking for some action on the fly rod last week and found some great fishing not too far from the car or from home. Anytime the temperatures rise above 32 degrees in February I can usually be found somewhere in my house turning cartwheels. Fishing trips lately have been few and far between. I escaped on a beautiful Saturday afternoon last week for a 1 hour trip to Black Canyon. The canyon stretch of the river upstream from the Grace power plant is a beautiful stretch of river with terraces separating deep pools. Each pool, run and riffle has its own character and the water can often be difficult to read and even harder to wade. The bottom of the river is lava rock from an ancient flow, the current has chiseled the large canyon and made some holes only as big around as your leg and deeper. On more than one occasion I have been walking along the downstream edge of a terrace shelf and with one misplaced step found myself up to the hip in a hole barely big enough for my boot to fit through. Take caution and it is always good if you don't know this stretch of river to take a buddy along. 

This trip didn't turn out to as much of a challenge as I thought that it might be. In fact since I have started keeping this blog last March, I have now caught a trout on a dry fly for 12 consecutive months. This is a feat that I am somewhat proud of even though if you know where to go on the Bear there is a good chance of fish rising in the middle of a blizzard. the fish don't seem to care much what is going on with the weather as long as there are midges coming off, and they come off in droves. Midge activity in the soft water where the fish don't have to expend much energy to get a mouthful of the little black bugs really get the fish going, and if you don't find midged coming off on top of the water there is a good chance there are active larvae and pupa working their way to the surface in the winter months. 

When I see mouths and tails I throw an 18 or 20 griffiths gnat or a parachute adams in the same sizes. When I see backs and dorsal fins I throw a small brassie or black midge emerger. If neither of the above are happening I chuck a standard nymph or a small midge larvae pattern or San Juan worm with success. Streamers will always work and as the famous Gary LaFontaine once said, "you know what they say about wooly buggers, they work" and the Bear River is no exception. A streamer fished very slowly may be what you really want to fish when you just want to catch fish, but fish them slowly, dead drifts work as well as slow upstream strips. 

Whatever seems to be going on around this area, Black Canyon is always the one place I can go to forget that it is winter. The scenery, wildlife and the river is beautiful and the fishing isn't bad either.

Bear River Report

Fished the Bear River last Friday and had a great time. The day was a bit warmer and I found some fish on the rise right away in some of the slower runs. It was just the medicine I needed during what appears to be never ending winter again. I then turned to the old trusty heavily weighted wooly bugger. I swung it through some of the deep holes with very little success and then found that by pulling them slowly directly upstream I could move the fly slow enough to attract some attention. All said the scenery was fantastic, there was very little snow in the canyon and I picked up about 15 fish in an hour and a half. It was just great to be outside again, hear the river and feel that crisp winter breeze (OK I could live without that). The fish do seem to be smaller than past years and the size did improve the farther that I got from the bridge. Awesome.

The Holidays have been good

I haven't fished for a while, but life has been pretty great. I have been at home helping take care of our new son Cam. He was born on Dec. 18th in Soda Springs. Life brings us all great gifts and the birth of a new child is certainly at the top of the list. Hopefully, if I play my cards right I will have 3 fishing buddies in a few years. Tyler is now 5, Jay is 2 and Cam is two weeks old today.

The week before Cam was born I did make a trip to Black Canyon by myself and the fishing was less what I had hoped for. Pacificorp ran a series of whitewater releases through the canyon this year in order to provide recreation for a few (I don't really think they exist) white water experts looking for class five material. What it seems to have done is wash sediments from upstream into the canyon and wash out the bugs. I have tried to verify my hunch about the bugs with other anglers and many of them agree that insect life appears to be much less prolific. One angler that I visited with that has fished the canyon for 15 years claims that this has happened every time that they accomodated the mystery kayakers. According to the local experts numbers of fish and aquatic life can stay down for up to two years. This is a poor management choice by Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Pacificorp. It seems as though they don't understand where their bread is buttered. 

Finally!!!

Whip finish and head cement and you're done. This is by far my favorite

winter pattern in Black Canyon. Tie them in a variety of colors. The only difference

from a regular wooly bugger is the large cone and thick lead wire. Tie them really heavy.

Wrap the chenille forward away from your body and then wrap the saddle

in the same direction. Remember with hackles shiny side forward.

Leave the tinsel for last and wrap it in the opposite direction of the chenille and saddle.

Next tie in the marabou tail and wrap over the lead to make it smooth.

Tie in a piece of chenille, tinsel and the tip of the saddle at the hook bend.

This is a size 4, 4x long hook with a large cone head

and heavy lead.

By the time I finish teaching and doing homework the last thing that I want to do is blog. I have somehow mustered the motivation tonight. I could use this time to complain about all of the fishing that I haven't done but I will instead say that I have fished once in the last month. Pathetic. I got down to tying some Buggers tonight and that perked up my spirits. With the winter all but here, I now dream of Bear River rainbows, and fat ones at that. In preparation for the trip that may never happen I began tying my Black Canyon arsenal. Part one the Wooly Bugger with plenty of weight. Here goes. As you can see the pictures are in reverse order. Great for the dyslexic.