Fishin' With Currier

I had the chance yesterday to spend the day with Jeff Currier fishing Island Park Reservoir, in Southeastern Idaho. It was great fun. Jeff spent over 20 years running the Jack Dennis Sports fly shop in downtown Jackson (where I first met him), and has since left to work for himself. He is a highly talented artist and angler that has truly figured out a way to make a living doing exactly what he loves. He lives and breathes fly fishing. While spending time with him, you quickly realize that his passion for the sport is highly contagious. Jeff's angling experiences, artwork, photography and stories has allowed him to be a freelance steward for the sport. Most notably, he has caught over 275 species of fish on a fly, in over 40 countries. This is why Jeff is the go-to authority on exotic fly fishing travel.

Jeff called me this week to see if I wanted to join him on an exploratory mission. With the lower Henry's fork jammed with boats hoping for a Salmonfly sighting, and the rest of the rivers in the region high and muddy, we decide to try something different. We set out for Island Park Reservoir in hopes of hooking into some large Rainbow's. Windy conditions made for tough fishing, but we spent the day trading some truly great stories. Make sure to check out Jeff's Global Fly Fishing Blog to see what he has been up to lately.

I was able to get up on the Firehole this week as well, guiding some folks from Louisiana. The river is in great shape...flows are tea-colored and relatively low. The winds gusted toward 30 mph, which made it tough on these greenhorns though. Relentless tangles and a broken rod tip made for a long outing.

Temps are trying to climb into the 70's this weekend, which should help the runoff to kick in again. Cold nights, though, have been stalling the effort...the past two nights have seen temps in the high 20's. The Green is back up over 1,100 cfs, the South Fork is at 23,000 cfs and the Snake has been lowered to 3,990 cfs out of the dam in anticipation of the tributaries coming up any day. The most staggering stats can be seen on the Wyoming Snowpack Data website. The Snake River Basin is now well over 300% of normal snowpack...wow! Check out the other amazing numbers on this site. Will the snow ever melt?

Here's a few shots from our outing yesterday, including a classic of me with a monster sucker and one of Jeff's famous tailgate. FYI...catching a sucker of this magnitude takes quite a bit of skill on a flyrod :) More soon!