After a number of great days in the South Fork Canyon, it finally got tough this week. The powers- that- be in Idaho decided to bring the river up over 18,000 cfs on Wednesday. That was an increase of about 8,000 cfs. It has virtually brought the fishing to a halt. Not only is the water very high, it is stirring up debris and silt, further complicating things. I guided a newlywed couple on the upper South Fork on Wednesday, as they were bumping up the water flow. Despite the conditions, we picked up a few fish here and there. Julia and Jim had never fished out of a driftboat before, and their first experience with me was certainly a challenging one. They did great keeping their stonefly nymphs in the zone all day. We decide to skip the Canyon the next day, and headed for the Firehole. It's still fishing OK there, provided it is not too bright. Hopefully these high South Fork flows are not going to last too long, but no one has heard much yet. All of the reservoirs in the Snake River system are full, or near full, which is why they are moving the water; there is still some snow left to come down, and with the cooler weather these past two weeks, the runoff has stalled a little. Hopefully we'll see some hotter weather soon. Here is Jim Childress with a chubby brown we nailed on Wednesday. Nice fish Jim!
2 comments:
The powers that be...you mean Palisades being 100% capacity and nowhere else to put the water. 20 days of rain will do that. The South Fork will be fishing again in a week or so (I hope)!
Had the "powers that be" been paying attention to how much snowpack was left upstream in Wyoming, they would have let more water run earlier. Now we've got high water coming into some great hatch times...hope you're right about a week or so.
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