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.

This is a continuation from the Portneuf Post (so read that one first if you haven’t already).

We finished the "disappointing" fishing on the Portneuf after about four hours, an hour after my deadline imposed by Talking Bull. So it was time to head back to the West Fork of the bear River.

As mentioned in my bio, I’m pretty much interested in fishing for native species. Dan shares my passion. We love to find the streams that have cutts, and does the West Fork ever have them.  In fact, I have often wondered if it’s possible to get tired of fishing, and I think today’s events answered the question!

We made a quick trip back to West fork and stopped at our usual stopping place. Dan hopped out at the lower part. I drove upstream to the two-thirds point and parked. The plan was for Dan to fish the lower third and I’d fish the  second third. He’d pick up the truck and drive it to our stopping point, walk down to meet and we’d fish the third third together.

I stopped the truck and walked downstream 40 yards to this hole:

That creek is about eight feet wide. This hole had at least eleven cutthroat in it over ten inches.

I cast the following beetle (this is the actual beetle I fished with for about the first hour):


(sorry about the two different backgrounds, the front view shot didn’t turn out too well in my vise)

My first cast produced a strike with a fish on long enough to feel its weight. The second cast floated back to me freely. Third cast produced this:

That scratch along his flank was like that when I caught him. He measured 13". Check out the great red coloring on the gill plates and the lack of spots except the few large ones near the tail.

My fourth and fifth casts each caught a fish about 10" long. My sixth and seventh casts were ignored. My eighth cast produced a strike, but I couldn’t land him. My ninth through eleventh casts each caught a fish 11" – 13". My twelfth cast was a miss. Thirteenth cast caught a 10". My next three casts produced one strike and two misses. The seventeenth and eighteenth casts caught two more, one about 11" and one about 13". The next several casts were blanks, but by that time I was into the riffle above the hole.

That’s eight fish 11"-13" landed with three more misses in about 20 casts in the first hole I fished. That hole was about 8′ x 20′ and only about 2′ deep at the deepest.

The next two and a half hours were pretty much like that, though not as many fish per hole as the first hole. Some holes  produced nothing and a couple of holes produced multiple fish no larger than six inches.

There were several fish in the 14"-15" range as well:

By the time Dan caught up to me I had only fished about half of my section, but I had caught over 30 fish. Dan said he did about the same. Together we figure we caught and released over 70 fish in three hours in a half a mile of river.

We were both pretty much fished out by the time we stopped and headed home. So yeah, it is possible to get tired of fishing. But what a way to go!

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)