Last Friday (Ocotber 17) and Saturday (October 18) saw Dan (for long-time readers, that’s Talking Bull) and I plying the waters of the forked Snake. Kevin (from The Cutthroat’s Spot) was kind enough to give us some insider information (he lives ten minutes from the South Fork—lucky bugger!) on the river. We heeded his advice and hooked up with some nice trout (and a couple whitefish).

The river near Rigby has some very easily waded sections this time of the year (I don’t think the same could be said of those sections in mid-summer). There are several spots where the river splits into channels. There are a few pools and some riffles. There is also lots of flat water. The flat stuff was pretty unproductive. The riffles were better, especially at the heads. There was some occasional success along deep undercut banks also.

Long flats (Dan is way back there at a riffle): .

We are a couple of dry fly fishermen, so that was our hope for the river. There were no risers when we hopped in the river at 10:00AM, so I threw on a zebra midge. I caught a whitefish and rainbow with that in about two hours of fishing. We were mostly killing time, awaiting an anticipated 1:00 baetis hatch. But that never materialized. Some bugs came off the water, and there were fits and starts, but never anything big enough to get the fish consistently feeding on the surface. The temps were in the upper 60′s and the skies as blue as could be. We figure if it was a bit cooler and/or some clouds materialized, that would have helped us, but no such luck.

It seemed like a lot of time was spent doing this:

We found a couple of good riffles that started to produce and we both picked up a couple of decent fish. I was able to pull a couple of cutts of 16″ and a rainbow of about 13″ using a midge sprout pattern on the surface from a hole right behind where the long slick picture was taken. Dan also pulled a few out of there.

In the long slick in the picture above, on the far left, was a channel. Fish started to rise more frequently through there and we picked up a few more smaller fish. We moved from this side channel back into the main stem and Dan caught a couple more.

Dan did get the hairlip award for catching this specimen:

Around 3:30 we hopped in the truck and moved east looking for a few other accessible spots. We found them and fished some more and caught a few.

We spent almost eight hours on the river, so we averaged about one fish every 30 minutes. We mporbably waded close to two miles of river.

And we were rewarded with a beautiful evening on the snake:

Dan’s brother-in-law and his wife live on the eastern edge of Idaho Falls. So we crashed there for the night (thanks for the dinner, movie and bed Trevor and Kimber).

Kevin is the self-proclaimed Fishing Nazi (by the way, the moniker is nowhere near the truth, more like the fishing Ghandi), so we were up at 5:30 and on the road about 6:20 to try to get to the Henry’s Fork at sunup. We met Kevin at a gas station (only about 12 minutes late), but it took forever to get the pump working and pick up a bite to eat. So by the time we left Rigby it was about 5:50.

Meeting Kevin was a pleasure. He is a great guy and an excellent fishermen. We were impressed with his willingness to share info and his waters with us. He really wanted us to get in tom some big fish that day.

For those of you who have not been in this part of Idaho, it has the best view of the Tetons. With some red clouds, the sunrise was spectacular. I wanted to stop and take pictures, but I didn’t think Fishing Nazi would want to stop.

This picture is from the afternoon, but you get an idea of the grandeur of the Tetons from the west side:

We made it to an undisclosed location on the Henry’s Fork about 8:00, and it was quite nippy, definitely below freezing. We suited up and made it to the water, which was quite stunning with the slight mist hanging above the water:

Kevin was the first to hook into a fish on the beautiful spring creek waters:

This was mostly zebra midge fishing. Kevin hooked into a couple of more

before Dan and I got warmed up. Pretty soon we each caught a few. Dan switched to a dry and landed this little beauty:

We continued to fish the beautiful river for a couple of hours and picked up some nice fish, but none of the real big ones Kevin was hoping for. But that was okay with us, because we fished some new water, had excellent company and were in some pretty incredible scenery.

We moved below the Ashton dam and fished a couple of more hours. We each picked up a handful of small fires (4″-10″) and a few more in the 10″-12″ range, but never got into anything substantial. We left the water about 3:00, parted company with Kevin and headed home.

We had a great time and look forward to meeting up with Kevin again this winter or for the salmonfly hatch next July.

Thanks Kevin!

 Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment