It's Good Everywhere

Since my last post, I've been all over the place guiding and fishing. No matter which direction you head from Jackson, you should be able to find good fishing right now. I guided the South Fork Canyon overnight on Sunday and Monday this week with Joe Strazzeri and friends, and it was a great trip. We do our overnight through Heise Expeditions; our host Mike Quinn took very good care of us with an outstanding steak dinner on Sunday, and breakfast the next morning. The fishing over there is pretty good right now. Fish were eating large dry fly attractors on the banks, with Yellow Sally trailers behind them. The main event right now is the PMD hatch. Park yourself on any riffle by about noon, and look for the Cutthroat hitting the surface. They are eating these bugs ravenously. It won't be long before they get a little picky, I'm sure. The Snake yesterday was great; Deadman's to Moose fished solid with Sallies and large attractors. I guided today on the Green River near Pinedale. We arrived to the boat launch very early under cloudy skies. Although the water temps are getting warm, and the river is low, we had great fishing. The cloud cover really helped. We netted a half dozen fish in the 18"-20" class...all Browns. We also saw a handful of rainbows. Large chernobyls with beadhead droppers did the trick.
I also had a first on the river today: we came around a corner to find a young mountain lion taking a sip of water. He immediately jumped on the bank and ran off...sorry, no photo. As some of you may know, there is sometimes tension between guides and anglers in this region. For example, it's common knowledge that some folks on the South Fork do not like Jackson Hole guides coming over there to work. Well, many of our clients like to fish there, and I like to think we are helping their local economy. We are perfectly legal to be guiding there and only want to introduce our clients to the river. The same goes for Sublette County, Wyoming...home of the Green River. Many residents down there do not like seeing us working or playing there...not sure why. I snapped a photo today of a sign we found on one of the bridges we floated under. Pretty funny. What is interesting is that we did not see a single boat today anywhere on or near the Green other than ourselves. Here's a couple of shots of today's fish with Larry Kown and Jeff Cummings. Stay tuned for some photos in the next post from No Tell Canyon.