Canada Trip

My dad and brother just got back from a great trip with my uncles to Canada. They caught a ton of northern pike and smallmouth bass. The biggest pike was 34 inches and the biggest smallie was a 5 lb 7oz fish. That's a new family record for us.

4/21/13

I was fortunate to have a great fishing and camping trip with some good friends this weekend. The fish were eating well, there weren't huge numbers caught but the average size was nice and big. It was almost entirely nymph fishing but we did get just a little dry fly action toward the end of our second day. Sure enough, I missed my first good dry fly take of the year. I think I'm a little rusty. I would have loved to have fished more streamers but its tough to cover enough water when wading and fishing streamers.

New Website

One of the companies I often work with just got a cool new website you should check out www.grandtetonflyfishing.com. These are mostly all guys from back when they were running out of the Jack Dennis shop in town. Guys like Mark Fuller, Scott Smith, Josh Gallivan, and a bunch of others. I don't have much to report on the fishing around here. We had a big trip planned for this weekend but a nasty winter storm rolled through that killed our plans. Hopefully next weekend will be the weekend and maybe I'll get out locally tomorrow. Here's a decent brown from our trip to the North Platte last weekend.

North Platte, South Fork, and Snake Rivers

I've had all of spring break off to fish for these past two weeks. I've spent some time down on the north platte, a few days on the south fork, and a day on the snake. Fishing was very good on all three of the rivers. On the North Platte we caught alot of fish, a few big ones, but mostly fish in the 12-15 inch range. It was pretty much all nymphing with a little streamer action here and there. The south fork has been fishing well, again with nymphs. Some days are excellent, some a little slower. Tons of whities with nice trout mixed in a regular intervals. The Snake river has been crazy recently. The fish are stacked up in the wintering holes and suspended a few feet below the surface. Once you find these spots you can catch as many fish in the 10-16inch range as you want with a few bigger fish hanging around. The video I've posted is from one of these spots on the Snake. If you watch closely, the fish that is being released goes right back into the feeding lane and begins feeding again. Copy and paste this like to see the video http://youtu.be/ntmLPbgYvik

Snake River in the Spring

I took a fly rod with me while taking the dog for a walk down by the Snake yesterday. I couldn't believe how good the fishing was. I don't normally fish the Snake very often, simply because I spend so many day guiding it, but I could not believe how good the fishing was. I wasn't really planning on fishing unless I could sight fish. When I got down to a few spots in the river there were literally hundreds of fish stacked up, sitting up in the water column, about 2 feet under the surface. I had a field day with these fish, they would eat just about anything small, both nymphs and dries. These fish were packed into small areas where springs come into the river, warming the water up a few degrees. Mot of the fish were in the 8-16 inch range but there were a few fish cruising around that looked bigger. You just couldn't get the fly past the smaller fish to reach the biggest ones. I should have taken my camera just to video it but I forgot... sorry. This picture is from a day on the South Fork last week. That day was also very good but the sheer number were nothing like yesterday.

Ice Fishing 2/27

My recovery from shoulder surgery has ended my ski season for the year so I've been filling my time with ice fishing. While not nearly as entertaining as fly fishing I've started to really enjoy ice fishing and I find it to be a great excuse to get outside for the day. Most my fishing has been out on Jackson Lake, the lake trout have been averaging 18-23 inches, with some really good days and some skunks. That's part of the fun is figuring out a totally new sport. The weather here is getting pretty nice and the river fishing is just starting to pickup. My roomate went wade fishing on the snake today and said it was really good with lots of fish rising to midges in the slow water. I'm hoping that I'll get to go wade fish the South Fork this weekend as the high temps are supposed to get up into the 40's. The snowpack is at about 86% of normal right now which should set us up well for the summer, as long as the weather doesn't suddenly turn warm and dry that is. Hopefully I'll have some nice trout pictures to post up here after this weekend!

We've been in a serious cold spell in the valley recently. The temperatures here have been about as cold as I have seen them for as long as I've seen them in the valley. Normal morning temperatures have been between -15 and -10 with daytime highs not being much above 0. Needless to say, this means we haven't been doing any fishing recently and the skiing has only been ok because we've been in a dry spell. On the plus side the water levels are about normal for this time of year so hopefully we'll be good to go for the summer. As we get into February I plan to start doing more fishing and may have more to write about. I am having shoulder surgery soon so that will put an end to my ski season and probably motivate me to fish a bit more, even though I'll have to use my left arm. Here are a few pictures from this past year that I don't think I've posted yet. Take care.