South Fork Fishin'

I've been on the South Fork of the Snake the past three days, and will be on the river the next two at least. I guided on the lower river Monday, the canyon section on Tuesday and the upper section today. It has been a very mixed bag of fishing...all depending on where you float. The salmonflies have only been seen on the lower river thus far, so needless to say, that is where most of the traffic has been. On Monday, we only saw a handful of the big bugs, and no fish were eating them. We had good fishing with yellow sally nymphs, copper johns and adult drakes. The riffles were actually pretty good on gray drakes. The canyon section also fished well on the same nymphs, with better dryfly action on the drakes. There were also some PMDs getting eaten in the riffles. The upper section today was by far the slowest...lots of whitefish on nymphs and no dry action. I think that the water needs to warm, and the clarity needs to improve on the upper section before the fishing improves. Hopefully by this weekend, the salmonflies will come uncorked and they will begin moving up river. On each section I fished this week, my clients all raised fish on their orange strike indicators, so the fish appear to be ready for this hatch. The problem was that each time we switched to some big dries, they got ignored. Here's a photo of an adult salmonfly, next to a dry imitation. More soon!