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.

I think Dan was a bit jealous because at the end of the fishing day, as we were stripping off our waders, he said that I had expressed my excitement at least four times (well, he said that the picture was worth a lot more than the verbal comments). Okay, it probably wasn’t jealousy because he did pose with my pride and joy (the picture is at the end of the post if you just can’t wait).

Today was another reconnaissance mission. We wanted to see what it was like closer to the headwaters of the famous West Fork we fished last week. We had never been to that area, so that was today’s main destination. The “near the headwaters” was among a lot of grazing land at 6000′, but luckily access was on public land:

The West Fork runs right along the white line (it goes behind the hill in the middle and in front of the hill on the far right).

It’s a pretty little creek, with openings here and there, and lots of brush and trees block access in areas as well:

Dan was first in the water:

(make sure you compliment him on his new hat—his ears were getting burnt, so he needed some cover)

He had a fish on within a couple of casts:

We were hoping for cutthroats along this upper stretch, and luckily were not disappointed. As far as we can tell, the entire West Fork is loaded with a Bonneville Cutthroat. Dan said several years ago he did catch one that appeared to be a cutthroat-rainbow mix. Other than that, nothing but cutts!

This is the hole he plucked the fish from:

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

“What?”

I told him the exciting news.

One of the best catches of the day was this little fella:

He was about 35′ upstream from us. He didn’t seem too bothered. We kept as quiet as possible. I snapped some shots. I moved a little closer and snapped some more and took a little video. Then we tried to spook him with animal noises (my wife pulled the you-couple-of-idiots face when I told that). Then we started talking and moving closer. He finally took off. I hope he has the instincts to make it.

This is a fairly open section, but you can get an idea of the typical “dap-and-dab” fishing we had to do.

This method did help produce this fine specimen:

I was only getting little nips here and there from the small fry. Dan was getting those as well, but he at least landed a couple of better-sized fish. I finally got one about 6″.

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

“What?”

I told him the exciting news again.

We headed downriver to our usual destination after about two hours of fishing. We hoped the back way was accessible all the way downriver and out our usual route. It was an exciting, back-realigning trek. We crossed the creek several times. And finally made it to the burned out section we fished just eleven days ago:

The red indicates the approximate location of the water when we were in the same spot last week. This is the hole Dan caught the fish in that I have on video from last week’s post.

I picked up a nice 13″ cutt that I tried to get a picture of, but it flopped out of my hand while I fumbled with the camera. It was time to wrap it up and head home.

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

“What?”

“My feet are dry!”

That’s the mark of a true friend—someone willing to pose with the best catch of the day: a walked-in-all-day-long-in-waders sock.

That was indeed my best fishing day in at least 18 months of fishing. I am officially the Aquaseal poster boy:

Several tubes of Aquaseal have created this thing of beauty. After every trip for the past year and a half I would look for, and try to Aquaseal patch, the leaks in my neoprene footies. No problems with the breathable fabric, but those booties have been my bane. Dry feet make this the best fishing day in 18 months!

Leaky waders or dry waders, I want to see more pics of great looking patch jobs. Leave a comment with a link to the worst looking patch jobs you know of.

“Hey Dan, guess what?”

These are Talking Bull’s hand-me-down waders (they are now my son’s waders). I’ve highlighted a few important features that my son has been especially impressed with.