Fishing for Desert Natives – Preface

Fishing for Desert Natives – Day 1

I’m usually an early waker, with or without an alarm. So camping for me is tough, especially when sharing space with someone else.

Dan and I decided to use the bed of the truck as our bed. He has a Ranger, which is a little narrow for two and it’s only six feet long (I’m 6′-1″). So using some built-in slots in the bedliner, we made a little platform to sleep on that got above the wheelwells, making it wide enough for two, with about 30″ of space between the platform and shell ceiling. We also made the platform fold out, making it longer than the bed, so the shell door and the tailgate had to remain open. To keep the platform from flexing Dan put a toolbox between the platform and tailgate.

To get in and out of the bed, Dan put a cooler at the edge of the tailgate. I had to step on the cooler, hoist the top half of my body lying on the platform, legs dangling, then scoot the rest of the way up.

To provide some protection against mosquitoes and potential rain, Dan bungeed a plastic tarp over the rear of the truck. The entry and exit point to the bed was on his half. I slept with my head toward the cab and Dan slept with his head toward the tailgate.

To get out of the truck, I had to inch my way, on my belly, feet first, toward Dan’s head. Move the tarp out of the way, project my legs over the edge of the platform, then reach my toes toward the cooler. I’m sure this beached whale routine looked hilarious to anyone who was unfortunate enough to view this. Of course, there is no way I can do this without disrupting Dan’s sleep.

So, back to the waking-up-early dilemma. Since I didn’t want to wake Dan when I awoke with the sun, I lay in my sleeping bag staring into space for an hour or so. I’m not a lounge around in bed guy—when I wake up, I get up. It’s very disconcerting for me to do nothing. So on that morning I waited until my bladder finally got the best of me, then I woke Dan and did my best inch-worm maneuver out of the truck.

And there stood Gary, fully geared, ready to fish! Here’s a guy after my own heart—if it’s a fishing trip, there’s no farting around with externals: sleep, breakfast, etc.—it’s just fish, fish, fish. Even the night before when we met, we talked fish nonstop the entire time. This guy has a passion about not just fishing, but the fish too.

I relieved the bladder, roused Dan (not that he wasn’t fully awake after my grand exit from bed) and got the rod rigged—we were off to fish Rock Creek for some redband trout.

Rock Creek is small enough that we really don’t have to worry about wading it, so we planned on shore fishing. For some reason, I’m currently hiking bootless (I don’t know how that’s happened, but I haven’t had a pair of hiking boots for about a year). So I pulled on my “hiking” boots for the day—a pair of cowboy boots.

Video of Rock Creek:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We walked downriver about 3/4 of a mile and fished back toward camp. The little redbands were frequent and fierce little fighters. I caught well over a dozen with the average size about 6″ and the largest about 9″. They’re beautifully colored with many of them bearing heavy par marks and vivid red bands.

Gary and Dan catching redbands at Rock Creek (hey guys, wet those hands first!):

Click here to view the embedded video.

They seemed eager to take just about any kind of dry #10-#16 and Gary was picking them up on a nymph dropping from a dry.

We fished for a good hour and a half before making it back to the truck for breakfast. With fishing being the main priority of the trip, food wasn’t—no big breakfasts or fancy foods. Like I said, priorities: fish, fish, fish. So it was cold cereal for Dan and oatmeal for me.

Gary’s dad and sister accompanied Gary but were just camping, not fishing. So when it was time to head to Guano Creek, the three of us piled into Dan’s truck. Gary’s a tall guy (I’m guessing about 6′-4″) and so he couldn’t squeeze into Dan’s micro-extended cab (you know, the type with the mini fold down seat). So being the thoughtful person I am I hopped in back and mentioned (not “whined” or “complained” as my detractors might allege) that my knees were touching Dan’s gear on the other half of the back of the cab. I asked if he could shift some of it. Instead, he told me to get out and drive and he would sit in the back. (Stalker’s tip: It’s better to be thought a whiner than be squished in tight quarters for a five mile drive over bumpy dirt roads. Not that that was what I was doing. I’m just sayin.)

We were headed to Guano Creek looking to catch some Alvord cutthroat trout, the main reason for our trip. Dan and I were both pretty stoked: when do you have the opportunity to catch what might be the remaining handful of fish bearing the look of the extinct Alvord cutthroat? We weren’t fooling ourselves, we understood that genetically they are far from pure. But what little living genetic material remaining of the Alvord cutthroat on the entire planet, it seems to remain in only this one creek.

And yet with the excitement was an even stronger sense of dread, maybe even a little confusion over their peril—how could this happen? What were people thinking by introducing non-native species into the Alvord’s home waters of Trout Creek and Virgin Creek? (I know, I know, they didn’t understand what the consequences of their action would be—the science and understanding just weren’t there.) So why hadn’t more of an effort been made when they were “rediscovered” in Guano Creek in 1986? (There were efforts made, but it was probably too late by then anyhow.) Can anything be done now, or is it beyond human’s capabilities to right the wrong?

I couldn’t help these thoughts from banging around in my head as we bumped down the road while Gary told about his trip in last year. Then there it was, an open meadow and Guano Creek running through it. Where we came upon the creek it was closed in by willows, but further downstream we saw that it thinned out. The valley narrows in on each side from small mesas, coming closest together where Guano Creek runs through it at some rock outcroppings. We made our way toward this section and stopped just a little upriver from the outcroppings at an approximation of where Gary figures is the lowest point he fished last year. Our plan was to walk further downstream and then work our way upstream to about where some corrals are.

Dan was already in the creek fishing while Gary and I were still getting ready. A couple of minutes later Dan hollered that he had a fish. I ran over with the camera. It was our goal to photograph all the fish, especially the ones with the Alvord phenotype, and record the length of each and location where it was caught.

The first fish Dan caught had Lahontan characteristics. Even though it wasn’t an Alvord, it was Dan’s first Lahontan, so it was an exciting catch. It’s not exactly clear which strain of Lahontans swim in Guano Creek—historically there were no fish in Guano, so any fish there were stocked at some point in time. It is known that redbands, Lahontans and Alvords have all been stocked there.

I reminded Dan of the plan to walk downstream then fish back up. As we made our way past the rock outcropping, we really started to notice the mosquitoes. They were hovering and clustering as they mobbed us. Dan got his head net out and I grabbed the 100% DEET which we all slathered on. Skin cancer runs in my family so I usually try to wear long sleeved shirts fishing. My shirt, boots and long pants kept most of them at bay.

I also wear a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off. I have a nice crushable fedora I usually wear fishing, but anticipating hot weather in the desert I picked up a new hat. Dan was with me and since he needed one too we both got the same hat. It’s great for warm weather because it has a mesh band around it, but not so great for mosquitoes because the top is light fabric and rests right against my head. The skeeters got right through. I ended up putting DEET on my hat, face, neck and hands, but they have that habit of hovering—especially in the face. Before we’re finished with the day, I’ll have snorted four mosquitoes up my left nostril (I have no idea why the right was spared) and one mosquito entered my ear. The mosquito fishing slap dance is interesting, but I dance it will catch on soon.

We got to a spot where the road crossed the creek and started fishing there. Gary moved down a bit lower and I was a bit higher up the creek (“up Guano Creek” doesn’t have quite the ring as the more famous creek you don’t want to be up).

A good 15 minutes into the fishing and I saw Gary hustling upstream without his gear. He said that he had a fish on, but he lost his camera! I hurried downcreek so I could get a shot, trying to run over the bumpy ground with my cowboy boots on. Gary was on the far bank looking for his camera in the spot he last remembered using it. Luckily the vegetation wasn’t too thick and he found his camera. He continued back to the fish on his own and relayed the information to the data man (Dan took my little field notebook and a pen to keep the data in).

We mostly caught Lahontans and what looked to be Lahontan/Alvord hybrids before Gary caught the first fish with distinct Alvord markings. By the time we made our way back up to the outcroppings I had finally picked up my first Alvord-looking fish. It was really quite something to think of its dwindling gene pool as I gently cradled it in my hand for a quick shot.

The Alvord types seemed to start coming to hand a little more frequently as we got back toward the truck. We were all fishing with an attractor dry and a nymph dropper. The fish tend to take the dropper most frequently, but occasionally we were surprised with a fish on the dry.

By then my feet were getting a little sore in the boots and I could feel a couple of hotspots coming on. I stopped at the truck and changed into some of those inexpensive wading shoes you wear at the beach. I drank as much water as I could then hustled to catch up with Dan and Gary.

We continued to pick up fish, with Gary substantially out-catching us. He had a lot more patience than Dan or me, spending three times as long at a hole casting to fish he couldn’t see. But it was paying off. In fact, if Dan couldn’t land a fish, but saw one, or had one on briefly, he called Gary over to cleanup behind him. Gary would invariably catch the fish.

Our evening plans were to head over to the Donner und Blitzen River (usually referred to as just the Blitzen River). We planned on fishing upstream of the Blitzen and then head over to the Little Blitzen in a small glacial valley and fish it. We weren’t sure how much driving we would do, so we figured we would need to gas up at Frenchglen before heading to the Blitzen. The gas pump closed at 5:00 so we needed to be of Guano Creek by 3:00. While Gary and Dan quickly fished up to the corrals, I picked up the truck and drove to pick them up.

As it happened, I record keeper ended up losing two pencils in the field, so we didn’t record nearly the data we planned on. Since we weren’t recording the data, and since I got tired of snapping photos, I stopped taking pictures (which was silly since I didn’t photograph my best looking Alvord). I’m guessing that by the end we caught 30-40 fish with about 15 of them having the strong Alvord phenotype.

Our trip to the Blitzen River after Guano Creek will actually be covered on the “Day 3” coverage.

Dan and I started planning this trip last winter. We came across Gary M’s trip to find the Alvord cutthroat that Dr. Robert Behnke mentioned in an update in his book, About Trout. Gary located the trout in Guano Creek, Oregon in August 2008 and wrote about it on his blog. Dan and I like to find native trout in out-of-the-way locations and this sounded like something right up our alley. This search became our main objective for our planned five day desert native quest, with everything else incidental to it.

One issue in fishing for native species deals with designating subspecies and people are often divided into two camps: splitters and lumpers. Most lumpers recognize 12 subspecies of cutthroat trout (although there is some debate around some of these subspecies) and splitters further divide those subspecies into different strains, usually based on their geographic location.

The Great Basin holds Lahontan cutthroat trout. Within the Great Basin are many smaller basins, currently cutoff from other smaller basins. The Coyote Basin holds a strain of cutthroat named for the creeks they are found in, the Willow/Whitehorse cutthroat. These cutthroat are genetically closely related to the Humboldt cutthroat found in the Quinn River drainage. Some contend that there isn’t enough evidence to designate them as their own subspecies (such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service) whereas others do (such as Dr. Behnke).

Gary is a splitter and I believe he plans on catching every possible strain of each subspecies of native trout in North America. At only the age of 23, he is surprisingly well on his way. Me, I accept there are various strains, but for now I’m content with catching each subspecies and not as worried about the strains. Later, when looking for new trout to fish, I’ll probably resort to looking for various strains.

So for this trip we planned on focusing on four (five, depending on your designation of the Willow/Whitehorse) species/subspecies: Alvord cutthroat trout, Lahontan cutthroat trout (including the Willow/Whitehorse), redband trout and bull trout (Dolly Varden). We wanted to stick to the upper 1/4 of the Great Basin for this trip.

We wanted to leave early Monday morning and meet with Gary Monday night at a campsite a couple of miles north of Guano Creek so we could fish for the Alvords on Tuesday. That’s 660 miles to travel, or, about 12 hours, considering stops, unforeseen traffic, etc.. We figure a good fish day starts at 5:00 and ends at dark, or about 9:30, giving us around 16 1/2 hours minus the 12 hours of driving. So we could squeeze in 4 1/2 hours of fishing somewhere.

The route we planned on taking would put us about 30 miles from some of our favorite redband trout water, the South Fork Boise River. A couple of miles before the SF turnoff are two creeks that also host redbands: Bennett Creek and Dive Creek. They had been on the radar for a few months and we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to fish for them.

As mentioned in a previous post, there are many reasons to fish for natives. There are a few disappointments as well, one being the cattle catastrophe, wherein the angler successfully finds the target water, and expects pristine conditions, only to find the place denuded by bovine.

As we drove the three miles to Bennett Creek, we had to open and close two gates. This is always a possible good omen that the creek you are looking for is being protected from cattle. Or, a bad omen that the area you are in has a lot of cattle traffic.

We dropped over the final rise and there it was, winding itself among the hills, Bennett Creek. I felt that little rush I often get when successfully finding the sought after creek. But as we pulled a little closer, we saw the scarred ground around the water. The water color had that blue-green look. Everything said, “Cows.”

We’ve raised fish in some scary looking water, so a creek is never ruled out until it’s fished. But after 15 minutes of waving the wand, no fish magically appeared and we put away the rods. We think further upstream might prove a bit more conducive to fish, but we’re on a tight schedule. If the creek held a supposedly important strain of redband, we’d explore it further. But the South Fork Boise, a couple of miles away, holds the same strain.

Bennett Creek Video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dan’s truck setup:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A few minutes later and we were on the South Fork. What a difference a dam makes! This tailwater has some great conditions for trout. The flows were at a higher level than I’m used to, but Dan has fished it so  much that he knows where the back channels usually form. (And yet the dam creates an artificial fishery that often didn’t exist before. Luckily the redbands were here previous to the dam, but the dam has altered the conditions. I wonder if the dam were removed, would it be the same fishery—would the size and quantity of the fish be the same?)

Our goal was to leave no later than 2:00 to give us seven hours to make it the final 360 miles to Rock Creek. We used up the first two hours trying a couple of different spots that were unproductive. We finally moved down below Cursed Hole to a side channel, Ice Box. We saw a couple of risers we fished to, but no luck. At the head of Ice Box is the tail of Cursed Hole where Dan pulled a nice redband out.

We fished up through Cursed Hole without any luck. We don’t carry watches, but we knew it must be getting close to, or past, 2:00. We figured this was our last stretch of water. I got to the top of Cursed Hole and was at my exit point. Just above me was a small hole with some rocks and branches forming a chute at the bottom and an overhanging tree bisecting it at the top, leaving about a 4’ x 4’ section of water to fish.

I cast my last cast into the hole. A branch angled up in the center of the chute and my float line was sucked toward it and about to tangle. I lifted the rod tip which simultaneously pulled the fly across the water, and right out of the jaws of a decent sized fish. The first fish anywhere near my fly all day.

Luckily there was no contact between fish and fly. I quickly reloaded the rod and cast a couple of feet above him, but about a foot too wide of his lie. The next cast seemed to be placed within his feeding lane. The fly drifted a couple of feet, but my rod tip was held high, keeping the line from tangling with the projecting branch. Another second and the fish engulfed my fly. I brought a beautiful 15” redband to hand.

This was the angler’s realization of all those self-deceptions and rationalizations when he knows his spouse wanted him home 30 minutes ago but he’s been skunked all day: “I’ll just fish this one last hole—I’ve got to catch something from this one—then I’ll go home.” Which then becomes, “just one more hole…” ad infinitum. But occasionally one experiences the Holy Grail of angledom: TRF²HF (the reward of the first “final” hole fish).

It was 2:30, 30 minutes past our self-imposed deadline. 360 miles to go, the last 50 on a gravel road of unknown quality (on Google maps satellite it appeared to be a nice gravel road, with the possible exception of the last 5 miles) that we didn’t want to travel on in the dark. And we still needed to stop somewhere to pick up groceries for the next four days. It was time to hightail it out of there if we were to make it before nightfall.

With six hours of road time, there wasn’t a lot to do, except tie flies (which we didn’t need), sleep (which was a bit too soon for since we were still running on beginning-of-the-trip adrenaline) or talk about something, like one of those taboo topics that can ruin a friendship, like politics (which we differ on slightly, but often discuss anyhow—although I put my foot down if the radio is blaring Hannity or Limbaugh or such). Or we could talk about another no-no topic: religion (which is actually fairly safe for us since we did originally meet at a church, and therefore have the closely aligned beliefs).

The world at large (and Stalker readership in particular) will be happy to know that we chose to discuss this latter topic and have married scientific, philosophical and theological belief systems into one grand whole. We have closed all loopholes. Solved all dilemmas. Answered all of the big questions. Yes, indeed, in *less* than our allotted time, we did what no others have come even close to, what has perplexed and vexed the greatest minds in history: we found the answer to life, the universe, and everything (Ok, Ok, Douglas Adams did beat us to it, but his answer, “42,” was incorrect). The answer is…Fruit Loops! (“Bucket o’ Chains” is a second line of reasoning that came close, but there were a few discrepancies that couldn’t be resolved.)

Other than the stimulating discussion, the drive took us through some beautiful country. This leg of our trip etched the northern most edge of one of the least inhabited, unroaded places in the lower 48: The Great Basin, also known as Basin and Range. This dry, desolate area just so happened to have experienced one of the wettest three weeks they’ve ever had.

As we rose over each range it gave a view of the next lush basin, most uninhabited. Some with a single farm or field. Some a small creek. All of them green: dusty muted greens of rabbitbrush and sagebrush, light green bitterbrush, darker greens of cinquefoil; dotted with blues of penstemon, blue flax and larkspur.

In Harney County, Oregon (10,226 square miles—population 7,600), the land becomes more basins and mesas and buttes with basalt volcanism being the major cause. We stopped at Buena Vista Overlook that scaled one mesa, giving a panoramic view of the Harney Basin.

Hopping out of the truck to take pictures we were immediately bombarded by swarms of mosquitoes. We were both wearing shorts and sandals and within seconds we were doing the skeeter hop: slapping arms, stomping legs, bending over slapping legs, straightening up to slap neck and arms, then back down to the legs. We took a couple of quick photos then dashed back to the truck. We quickly stripped down and put on pants and a long-sleeved shirt. We put on some socks then slipped our feet back into our sandals (that’s right ladies: socks and sandals—a mainstay of the wader brigade because it’s easy to get in and out of the sandals when you have to get in and out of the waders and believe me, you do not want to catch a whiff of the aroma wafting from a pair of unsocked wader-wearers).

The sun was just slipping over the mountains when we turned onto Rock Creek Road—the dirt road that would take us the remaining 48 miles. The road accesses the 278,000 acre Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, where we were camping for the night and home to Guano Creek, our main destination.

The dirt road teemed with wildlife: cottontail, jackrabbit, sage grouse, owls and quail. But only one antelope. We didn’t take a lot of time to admire or photograph the critters because light was fading fast and we didn’t want to search for Gary in the dark.

We finally (after driving through the first part of the campground, not relizing there was a second part) found Gary at the campground along Rock Creek about 10:00. I talked fishing with him for an hour or so while Dan set up the sleeping arrangement in the bed of the truck. We made plans to fish Rock Creek for redbands early the next morning before hitting Guano Creek, then called it a day.

[go to Day 2]

We explored a bit of this creek twice last summer. I don’t think I gave too may specifics on the creek dynamics before, so here is the official brief:

The headwaters were explored last summer. Dan caught a couple of small cutthroat. I caught one. The headwaters is typical small creek headwaters: small and brushy. The creek stays small and sometimes brushy as it runs through some cattle grazing allotments (we haven’t fully explored this 10 mile section).

Then it runs into some meadowy type areas. The water slows down quite a bit, has increased in volume, gets a little milky color to it and is warmer through here. We’ve caught a couple of fish in that section. That stretch is probably 5 miles or so long.

Then it starts to lose altitude and becomes a faster pocketwater creek. We’ve never caught anything in this stretch.  A little, unnamed tributary dumps in through this section adding a bit more volume.

Then, in summer at least, it disappears. The creekbed is still there, but the water has vanished. It looks like at some point in time a slide occurred and blocked off the water. But instead of pooling up, it percolated down. A mile or so downriver it bubbles back up. A couple of years ago this section also experienced a fire. Here’s a pic from last year where you can see the water is basically gone and the burnt trees (see picture to the right).

It’s this section and below where we usually fish. It runs for a couple of miles before entering private property. At that point it is diverted in the summer, making the remaining bed down to the confluence with the Bear River completely dry during the summer.

Our quest last summer and this trip was to try and determine where the cutthroat are during the spring. We have only caught cutthroat in this creek (thank goodness for small miracles that this little tributary hasn’t been infiltrated by other species). We figure that some fish might move out of the Bear to spawn since there is water through the summer-dry lower section in the spring. We figure some of the fish might move past the rockslide area since there is water there during the spring.

As the water dries up in various spots, they must hide out somewhere. We figure they might drop down lower in the river and get cutoff both above (the rock slide) and below (the diversion). This leaves them in our section to fish.

On this trip we dropped down from above (we usually enter from the lower end) into the middle, a slow, meadowy type area:

We didn’t find any fish this time. I’m guessing they are probably higher up toward the headwaters for the spawn.

However, we did find some fish in the unnamed tributary in the pocketwater section just before the creek disappears at the rock slide. This is the mouth of that unnamed trib:

and here is another picture to give you an idea of the size of the “micro-creek” we’re talking about:

Dan moved upstream (while I was letting a branch snap off and slap back into my face piercing me about half an inch above my upper lip). I caught up with him a minute later as he was coming back down. He held his hands about a foot apart and pointed toward the creek. Sure enough, holding in the water was a nice trout (I’d say more like 9″). He spooked and we moved up river.

Dan saw another one a little higher up. “I thought it was a piece of moss or something flapping in the water, but then it really moved and I could tell it was a fish.” In this picture, if you look really close, you can see its darker dorsal fin with the head to the left and tail to the right:

For the size of the creek, it was a pretty nice sized fish:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We continued upstream. I had a shot at two, but couldn’t get them to come to my beetle before I spooked them. The second one was another nice size fish looking just a little chunkier than the one Dan caught.

We continued up and Dan spotted three fish spawning. OK, two fish spawning with the bigger male chasing the smaller male away.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We decided to leave the fish to their business and we headed back to the main creek instead of fishing up further. We’ll have to come back later in the year and see if they are resident trout, or only there for the spawn.

The main creek down in our usual spot was high and off color. We fished a little, but I wasn’t too into it doing more walking than fishing. Dan caught one and lost one.

It was great to see such nice fish for such a small tributary. Some of you might think, “That’s a puny fish, what’s the fuss?” Well, I got thinking that if all fish were of the same water-size to fish-size ratio, there would be 20′ browns cruising the Madison. Imagine pulling something the size of a great white from the Snake River? That’s basically what we saw in this micro-creek: fish that were the length of about 1/3 the creek width.

Micro-creek+a three weight+native cutthroats=happy man!

PS We checked out a new tributary as well, a place called Willaims Creek. It’s on a bunch of private property for quite a ways, but once you get high enough, it’s some pretty looking water:

It’s supposed to have wild rainbows, not cutts. We’ll have to get in there and see if we can find some remnant cutt population. It would be a great restoration project.

We head a little lower from our morning beat. The river looks about the same, but there are a few more riffles than the upper stretch. The first riffle doesn’t produce. The clouds have toyed with us all morning and a thick band of gray scuds over the peaks to the west. The low rumble from the distance rolls closer. A few sparks jump from the peaks. I pull on my light rain jacket I’ve tied around my waist.

We move upriver to a small island that splits the river in two channels. I take the far channel. The rain pelts the water, almost looking like hail as the drops kick up the river in white splashes. I throw a few casts upriver. There is some disturbance near my fly on the far side of the seam. The rain picks up briefly, then suddenly slows. I cast my dark green hopper and have a fantastic strike. I bring a beautiful 17″ Yellowstone cutthroat to hand.

I get another nice strike on the near side of the seam, but the fish throws the fly a couple of seconds after the take. Maybe the omen was right, just a bit delayed in reaching fruition.

The rain has completely stopped and moved on to the east.

I meet up with Danny and John at the next fishable stretch, a nice deep channel with plenty of river weeds for cover. I tell John what I’m fishing with and give him a tan hopper since I’m out of green. The pattern is identical except the color. I pass them and wait at the next hole for Danny to fish it. It’s a nice stretch with a good riffle at the head. Danny fishes it, and so does John. After a dozen or so casts, I ask if I can throw in my hopper. On the third cast I reel in a 13″ rainbow.

Apparently the green hopper is the ticket. Danny is fishing a hopper pattern too, but I believe he says his is yellow.

Above the riffle is another slow, deep stretch. A small rock pokes above the water in the middle. I see a few fish hanging on my side of the rock, about 20″ deep. I cast upriver of the rock and catch a nice 14 incher, then a small 9″. I see a bigger fish next to the rock rise to my fly, but he refuses it. I tie on a #20 Copper John and catch a 14″ cutt.

We move to a large hole upriver. I feel bad as I continue to catch some nice fish and John and Danny go fishless. I land a rainbow and while in my hand, he jerks free, snaps my line and takes off with the hopper. I’m afraid I’ll be reduced to fishless status now too. I tie on a parachute Adams. Danny and John move up past the big hole and I’m able to land a couple more with the Adams. I finally move upriver too.

There is a nice deep channel here. John has a few fish rising near him, but he can’t get them to take. I see a couple of rises and have three very nice fish on and off. I see several fish down low and switch to my Copper John. I get one take-then-spit. I tie on a sculpin pattern and dredge the bottom up and down a 50′ section of water with no luck. Danny has just missed a nice fish on a stonefly nymph pattern, with the fish leaving him flyless.

The wind squalls through and we continue to fish the whitecaps. John has gone on just the other side of a stone outcropping, but remains fishless. Although none of us land a fish in an hour of fishing the stretch, it’s a great section of water and I’ll certainly be back.

Pool I caught the rainbow in.

We move back downriver to the big hole again. Fish are rising sporadically. Danny gets into some and lands them. I try the Sprout Midge pattern and take one and miss one. I switch to an Adams and take a couple more.

John and Danny fishing the big hole below a rainbow.

I throw the Adams back on and land a nice thick 18″ cutthroat.

The day is waning rapidly and we have a two hour drive ahead of us. We call it a day.

I feel bad for Danny and John—when I take someone to fish a place they’ve never fished, I want them to have success. For me, the eagle was an auspicious omen indeed.

Gilded hills and fields are punctuated with the dull greens of sage and dusty yellow blossoms of rabbitbrush. Dark basalt outcroppings jut here and there. Woven through it all is a verdant ribbon of water, its edges laced with greens.

Yes, our augur seems to have made the call, and we follow the auspices of the eagle to the river. The old bridge is long gone, but the concrete abutments remain. The only testament of the old Croney Road: a faint track on the far side snaking into the chromatic foothills. We wade across the river.

Terra tarsus—it rained a little last night, enhancing the pungent sage coming in bursts as we make our way over a small hill, then past the natural hot tub. The river is about 20″ lower than when I last fished here. As with so many waters in the west, the Portneuf is at the mercy of farmers and ranchers. But unlike most rivers, when the water demand is up, so is the river. Instead of drawing off water for irrigation, the river becomes the delivery system, so flows are higher in mid to late summer, when I was here last. With peak water needs met, the river returns to its lower flows.

The fish are forced to seek cover under river weed beds and moss blooms instead of the deep channels through this section. Last night’s storm may have put the fish down as surface action is almost nonexistent. A few midge clusters swarm. An occasional caddis flits about. But no insect near the water with any frequency.

Based on my last trip, Danny and I have tied on large Adams. John is working a caddis pattern. We walk the first 70 yards of river spotting ahead what I first take to be rises. But it’s just springs bubbling up. Discerning springs from rises is difficult, but we finally see a small, consistent, rise from a fish cruising an 8′ by 8′ patch of water near a small spring.

Danny casts to it a few times with the Adams, but nothing. As he continues casting, John casts the caddis and I switch to the Sprout midge emerger. They are finished, so I cast a couple of times. The sun is clouded over giving my nearsighted eyes a surprisingly clear view of my #20 midge from 25′. On the third cast a small bulge in the water under my fly is followed by another bulge. It’s hard to tell if it is surface percolations or fish, but it focuses my attention. The water curves down and the fly vanishes. Even though I’m intent on the fly, this takes me by surprise because there is no sign of a fish. I finally react and a large rainbow boils the surface. I feel the thrashing vibrate through the line and rod. Then nothing.

We fish back to the missing bridge seeing only a rise or two, but no fish other than one six incher somersaulting over the grasshopper pattern I switched to.

After two hours I’m beginning to doubt our graybeard’s auguring skills. We journey to Toponce Canyon to fish the small creek.

A shock of yellow splashes the mountains.

Wild rose leaves are turning and their bright red rosehips brighten the creek banks.

A few blueleaf aster still bloom.

We spread along the little creek and each fish our way upstream. I pick up a handful of hand-sized fish: three rainbows, two cutthroat and one brown. The largest is maybe 12″. We meet up where the canyon opens into a wider valley. Danny and John have also caught fish, Danny landing the largest about 14″.

We eat what passes for lunch and relax for a few minutes enjoying the cool air and bright colors of the creek, before heading back to the Portneuf.

(read part II)

St. Charles Creek is located located on the Northwest "corner" of Bear Lake in southern Idaho. There are about seven miles of fishable creek along the main asphalt road until you get to the three main tributaries: North fork (the main stem, which I believe has a dirt road along it), Middle Fork and South Fork. The main canyon drive is a beautiful little thing that leads to Minnetonka Cave, where guided tours are given. The creek is about six to ten feet wide in most places with pockets and pounge pools the predominate fishing features.

There is a healthy population of rainbow and brook trout, with smaller numbers of cutthroat and cuttbow. The largest fish caught was a 15" rainbow, with most rainbow in the 12" size and brookies going about 6"-8". There was relatively little surface action, but the fish were eager to hit #8 stimulators and #12 beetles.

Watch out for mosquitoes! If I didn’t know better, I could have mistakenly thought we were fishing in Alaska. The lower places we stopped at (just above the lowest campground, then again about a mile farther) were infested with the buggers. This is the first time I have ever had mosquitoes land on my casting hand while I’ve been casting. I was constantly swatting at my face and neck. The higher we got, the fewer mosquitoes, but still too many. Take triple protection DEET!

Also, beware of the cowpatties. The shear amount of cow crap scattered about the road and through the meadowy areas alonf the creek was staggering. Good thing we were wearing wading boots.

Be prepared to bushwhack if you want more places to fish since there were relatively few open areas.

We only fished about the first five miles. I would like to fish closer to the confluence then up the North Fork. Hopefully there would be a healthy population of cutthroat somewhere up the canyon, and fewer mosquitoes. It seems like the largest/most fish we caught were along the mile or so stretch we fished near the lowest campground.

I believe there are three fee campgrounds: a lower one, one a little more than half way up, and one close to the end of the pavement.

If anyone read this post, they should know those were Talking Bull’s plans. I was okay with the plans when he first mentioned them—no complaints. Even after we spent a lot of time walking for no fish, I was still okay with it.

So it was my turn to plan our “if-this-is-Monday-we-must-be-fishing-Idaho” day. I chose to go to the Portneuf River in Idaho. You’d think I killed the poor guy! “Oh, Walks Like turtle, I don’t think you want to go there.”

“Well, I just read The Coach’s website, and it sounds okay to me. Why won’t I like it?

“In it’s glory days it must have been phenomenal. But I fished it a few years ago and it’s just too slow and there are mostly rainbows.”

Of course, since we like to fish for natives, he figured that would turn me off. But I’d read some things and saw the coach’s report and figured it would be worth a shot—it certainly couldn’t be worse than last Monday, I thought.

“I’d still like to give it a try, just kind of see what’s there.”

“Okay, okay, you get to choose and I won’t say anything more.”

So I planned on swinging by his house at 7:00AM so we could get a good start. We planned on reconnoitering an unfished creek and checking out the fishablity of the West Fork of the Bear River, so we wanted to have enough time to get Bull back by 6:00PM.

Obviously Talking Bull forgot the promise of last night, because he kept mentioning the unpromising conditions of the Portneuf off and on to our first place, Birch Creek. Birch creek is a tributary to Mink Creek. We wound our way up Birch Creek Rd for a couple of miles. Dan got out and tossed a fly in the water in a few spots. (see pictures below) The water looked great, quite fishable. But a couple of dozen casts in three separate locations didn’t bring any rises. We turned and headed to our next checking spot, West Fork of the Bear River.

The West Fork is a nice tucked away spot (don’t ask—we won’t tell). It has a healthy population of cutthroat, so it is right up our alley. Talking Bull first started fishing this place some ten or so years ago. He figures it will probably be blown out, but he wants to check “In case the Portneuf isn’t any good. I hope you won’t be disappointed with the Portneuf.”

Well, the West Fork not only was not blown out, it was perfect! We drove up to a particular spot where a fire went through recently. It looked terrible and was actually above where we usually fish. We walked along the bank and Talking Bull couldn’t resist—he went back to the truck and got his rod and tossed his fly in. A couple of casts and he missed a strike. But that got his blood going. A couple of casts later and he was hooked in. (see pictures below)

Right click and choose “play” to see Talking Bull with first cutt of the day.

“That’s it, we’re fishing here!” he said.

“Not so quick,” I replied. “I still want to go to the Portneuf.”

“What? You’re kidding me! This is great!”

“Nope, we can come back here later in the afternoon. Consider this fish foreplay—leaving now will only make coming here later all that much more enjoyable.”

“Three hours. I’ll give you three hours.”

So off we went in search of the sure-to-be-disappointing Portneuf. Of course, I think I heard, “I hope you won’t be disappointed,” several more times. To his credit, Talking Bull also tossed in one, “I could be wrong.”

The Portneuf is an ugly little cuss where it meanders into Lava Hot Springs. It looks like some of the creeks here in Cache Valley that mosey through farm country—slow and dirty. There are groups (Cariboo Conservancy and the Portneuf River Ecosystem Project) trying to get the Portneuf back to the blue-ribbon trout stream it apparently was before the 70′s.

We stopped at “Mike’s Place” and looked over the bridge (see pictures below). There were lots of fish with some in the 16″+ range. None were feeding on top.

Talking Bull said we needed to go farther upstream so we did. Where the main road takes a large sweeping bend to the east there is a road that cuts to the north, Toponce Road. Just north on this road is a fishing access point. The whole area is surrounded by buck and rail fence. If you have ever fished Silver Creek, the river bed is very similar. It’s a great spring creek with a great rock and course sand bottom interspersed with weed beds. Not nearly as much silt and mud as Silver Creek. (see pictures below)

We cut through the field to the south of the parking lot and hopped in where the buck and rail fence met the water. We then waded downstream to the first big bend to the west. There was a nice batch of rocks with a large rock on the south bank. We saw a few risers. We had spotted some PMDs coming off so I tied one on. I got a couple of solid hits but couldn’t keep them on for more than a second or two. Talking Bull also had one on briefly, but couldn’t land either.

We headed downstream again, walking on the bank, keeping our eyes open for risers, but couldn’t see any. The water is exceptionally clear, but we couldn’t see many fish either. They seemed to hang in pods with the pods scattered here and there. We walked downstream a couple of hundred yards then worked our way back. Talking Bull spotted a couple of risers and we began casting upstream to them. They seemed to spook relatively easy when cast over. Talking Bull finally gave up and got out of the water. He spotted a dozen or more feeding upstream from me so I cast upstream. It spooked them.

We headed another 100 yards upstream and talked with a gentleman we saw catch one earlier. He verified that yes, they do seem to bunch up with lots of empty water between bunches. A nice calibaetis hatch came off earlier in the morning. He was currently fishing with a nymph.

We made it back to our first hole and cast to the another riser or two with no luck. A couple of yards above the hole we were fishing was a rise. I began casting to the rise and was soon into a nice 13″ bow that I landed. A couple of yards above that I landed a nice 14″ Yellowstone Cutthroat. Yeah, baby, that’s what we were after! Talking Bull was slightly placated that the trip was not in vain. (see pictures below)

We moved upriver to the spot right down at the end of the little road from the parking lot. A bridge used to cross the river here, but it’s gone. Downriver from the bridge is a big pool. When I was still a good 100 yards away i could see a rise. I could see a dorsal fin. It must have been a good-sized fish if I could see it from that distance. I fished up the the hole and Talking Bull just made his way to the pool. By the time he got there, there were a couple of nice fish rising.

Talking Bull was using a BWO emerger pattern. He cast several times and hooked a 20″ rainbow. He had it on for a minute or so and it worked itself loose. Being non-native fish, Talking Bull decided to call these little darlings “Bow-Ho’s” (pronounced boe-hoe, named for those artificially made-up ladies of the evening).

We watched as another, larger fish consistently rose to large BWO’s on the water. I was slightly upriver and Talking Bull made a cast to it. Rose and the fly disappeared—into the sky. Miss.

I tossed my fly upriver and let it float down several times. On about the fifth cast my fly also disappeared—into the sky as well.

Neither of us felt any weight on the line and the fish was still feeding. Talking Bull again cast and the fly disappeared. But this time the fish was on! I whipped out the camera and began videotaping the events. Talking Bull told me to get out there and help him.

I grabbed his net with my left hand (the right was still taping) and tried pulling Talking Bull and the net toward the fish. I continued to do this until the net was ripped from it’s mooring on Talking Bull’s fly pouch. The fish wanted nothing to do with me and vigorously avoided me at all costs. I continued to tape and stagger after the beast.

Talking Bull finally got it close enough that I could scoop the net over it’s head and slightly past its gills. It was then folded in two into the net with more than half its body, head and tail, now projecting from the net. That was one big fish! Unfortunately, with only one hand available (no matter how much Talking Bull wanted me to ditch the camera, I wasn’t about to put it away), the fly was caught in the net and the fish got away.

Talking Bull estimated him to be about 22″. My calibrated eyeball had him closer to 23″. He was tall and wide too.

“That was the biggest rainbow I have ever caught,” Talking Bull said for the second time.

I hope he wasn’t disappointed that I made him go to the Portneuf.

(continued on this post)