Fishin' In The 80's

Even though we are now entering the second week of August, area rivers are fishing like it is still early July. Although local rivers have dropped and cleared significantly over the past few weeks, they are all still running much higher than average for this date, and many of them are still far from clear. The Snake River below Jackson Lake Dam is running at 2,840 cfs, which is a great level. The water is crystal clear all the way to the confluence of the Buffalo Fork. The problem is that the Buffalo is still adding about 1,000 cfs right now and is running very silty. The average flow for the Buffalo for this date is only about 400 cfs. This is still making the Snake a very large river now. I fished today from Pacific Creek to Deadman's, and it was tough. Although we had good action on dry flies, all of the fish were very small. We did not hook, miss, spook or roll a fish over about 12". Although the Green is still fishing well, it is also running high for the date at about 900 cfs, where the average is about 500 cfs. The folks over in Idaho have finally lowered the South Fork levels to reasonable 9,000 cfs...we should see the dry fly action spark any day now over there.

I got a chance to head over to the Wind River last week to float below Dubois. As you may know, Darren Calhoun and Wind River Canyon Whitewater holds the only permit to drift and fish the Wind River below Dubois on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Darren is allowing me the chance to run a few trips over there this year with some select clients! I spent the day with Darren and two of his top guides, Cale and Marco. We made a reconnaissance run, checking out the water and a few of the boat launches. The river is still a bit too high to fish, but we had a great day anyway. Marco and Cale are great guys. Hanging with other guides for the day is a great way to learn new techniques, and discover new ways at guiding humor. One of the hardest thing to teach anglers in a driftboat is to cast forward...ahead of the boat. While Marco was on the oars with me in the back seat, Cale accidentally cast upstream into my water. Marco promptly told Cale to stop "fishing in the 80's". (It's in the past). Very funny stuff! Here's a shot from the back seat of one of Darren's boats. More soon...