Sunday, August 2, 2015

8/2/15

This has been a great water year for us and the fishing continues to be excellent. The Snake and the Salt Rivers are fishing very well. The Green river is still fishable, but the water level is very low and it can be difficult to get a boat down it without spooking all the fish. On the Snake River we've been fishing mostly PMD patterns and terrestrials, but the tricos should be starting soon. Streamers and nymph droppers are always effective, but we tend to fish primarily dries. Here's a picture of a good client of mine with a massive 21 inch Cutty that sipped a size 14 beetle on an inside turn earlier this week. I've also included a few other client pictures from the past week or two.

Friday, July 24, 2015

7/24/15

The Snake is still fishing great. Dry fly action with stonefly patterns, caddis, and PMDs has been fantastic. The tricos are just starting on both the Snake and Green rivers and should provide some excellent technical dry fly fishing. Most of my trips recently have been on the Snake River with some quality fishing and a few more large fish starting to show up. I haven't been to the Green in the past week but it should be starting to pick up as the water levels drop and both the tricos and yellow sallies get going.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

7/18/15

Fishing has been great recently with much of the best action being on the Snake River. It's full on dry fly season at this point with only the occasional nymph dropper. The best combo has been a larger stonefly dry with a smaller mayfly or caddis imitation off the back. My apologies for the brief update, I'll try to get a more detailed one out soon. Thanks to Shelby Stone for sending these pictures from his family's trip on the Snake river with me.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

7/5/15

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend! I was fortunate enough to have a good buddy in from out of town and my family visiting from Colorado. I was able to take my buddy JB and my father out fishing for a few days, something that we don't get to do as often as I would like. Fortunately our fishing was very good. We had excellent dry fly sight fishing for some quality browns and rainbows. As far as the rivers go, the Snake ans Salt rivers have been fishing really well with both dries and nymph droppers. The fishing has been getting better on a daily basis and we're starting to catch some bigger fish. The rivers flows have been great recently and the fishing should continue to improve as long as the flows remain stable. The Green is still fishing well with a consistent gray drake and PMD hatch, but the water is beginning to warm up later in the day. This means we've been getting on the river earlier in the day and getting off a little earlier after the fishing has slowed down and the water has warmed up. This way we're hitting the prime fishing times and avoiding stressing the fish when the water gets up in the upper 60 degree range.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

6/27/15

Fishing has turned on in a big way. I've been slammed so I don't have much time to write a report, but the fishing on all the rivers that I fish has been excellent. We're fishing mostly dries at this point and catching some big fish. Here are some pictures from the past few weeks, I also have some great video but need to try and process it to be posted.

Friday, June 12, 2015

June 12th

The fishing options have been a bit limited in our area recently. The recent heavy rains have caused the majority of the Snake, Green, and and Salt Rivers to be blown out. The Firehole has been abnormally warm and is not fishing well due to that. The bright spots have been both Lewis Lake and the upper portion of the Snake below Jackson Lake Dam. Both of these areas have been fishing well, with the dry fly fishing really starting to pick up. I've been on the upper Snake for the past five days with good success on both stonefly patterns and smaller mayfly imitations. These areas should continue to improve everyday and hopefully the Green and Salt rivers will begin to clear here shortly. Some of these pictures are from up by the dam, some of the others are from a coupled weeks ago before runoff blew out many of our rivers.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

May Morels Hunting, Shed Hunting, and Lake Trout Fishing!

May is a great time of year in our area. There are so many different fun things to do and the weather can feel like summer. Some buddies and I have spent some time hunting elk sheds and collecting morel mushrooms in the area. I've been fortunate enough to find a few nice elk sheds and tons of morels this year. In one day, a buddy and I managed to collect 21lbs 5oz of morel mushrooms, a personal best for me. If you've never tried these mushrooms you're doing yourself an injustice. They are incredible whether sauteed alone or paired with elk or beef steaks. As far as the fishing goes, Jackson lake has been spectacular. The ice just recently came off of the lake and we've been crushing Macks since then. These Mackinaw trout will eat both flies and lures with bright colored flies and lures in the 3-5 inch range tending to be the best. These fish are really shallow at the moment and we've been able to sight fish to them in 2-6ft of water. Its kinda like flats fishing in a large, cold, northern Wyoming lake.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Great Spring Fishing/Trip Advisor Reviews

Fishing has been absolutely fantastic the past few weeks. I've had a couple good trips recently with excellent fishing. My last one was with a fellow guide, Josh Gallivan. If you haven't checked out his website I would highly recommend you take a look at it. This guy is a top notch fisherman with a great personality. Josh is someone who I trust enough to many of my overflow clients to all summer. We went on a two day, overnight camping trip and had a blast. The fishing was great with nymphing being the most productive, some solid dry fly action resulting in some large Colorado River Cutthroat, and some big fish chasing streamers. The first fish of our trip was actually a 23 inch brown trout that ate Josh's articulated streamer. On a side note, if any past clients are reading this, I would really appreciate a trip advisor review if anyone has the time to write one. Here's a link where you can post reviews, http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60491-d1818355-Reviews-or10-JH_Trout_Fly_Fishing-Jackson_Jackson_Hole_Wyoming.html#REVIEWS. If anyone has given a review an is reading this, thank you so much, every review is a a huge help to my business. Being an individual guide it is difficult to keep up with enough reviews to stay relevant compared to the larger companies with many guides. I'll try to keep the reports coming and keep everyone updated on the fishing and runoff conditions.

Key West Fishing Trip

I was able to go fly fishing with my dad for a few days down in Key West. Unfortunately the fishing was pretty slow and we had a guide who, while he understood fish behavior, had terrible people skills and was unpleasant to fish with. We did manage a few fish including a nice barracuda and a solid tarpon.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Snake River Update and Thailand Fly Fishing

I hope everyone has had a great winter. My apologies for my delay in posting, I’ve been busy trying to get into nursing school and was unsure of what my guiding schedule would be like for the year. I now know what nursing program I will be attending and I can safely book trips this summer through August. I may be able to guide a number of trips this September, but it will depend on the dates so please contact me if you do have any interest. Fishing in the area has been excellent recently. I was just out on the Snake yesterday and the river was alive with activity. The fish are keying in on midday hatches of Skwala Stoneflies, midges, and some blue winged olives mixed in. We’re getting a good amount of surface activity with the fish podding up to feed. We’ve had some great sight fishing recently, both with dry flies and sight nymphing. You can pull into area and see the fished stacked up, often hanging a couple feet below the surface. I’ve been fishing to these fish with dry dropper rigs, sometimes they eat the dry and sometimes they eat the nymph, but either way it’s a very visual experience. The fishing should stay good until runoff hits, so if you can get out there now I would do it. As far as my recent fishing goes it has been largely focused on the Snake. I wish that I been able to fish some other rivers in the area, but I’ve been busy with other things. I did get to spend the last few weeks traveling around Thailand on my belated honeymoon. My wife and I had a great time and she even let me spend a day fly fishing in Thailand. I had initially wanted to fish Cheow Lan Lake, a large reservoir located in a national park in Thailand, for Giant Snakeheads, but in talking to the guide service in the area it sounded like it was a very poor time of year for it. Instead, a friend of mine who also happened to be in Thailand on his honeymoon, joined me for a day of lake fishing for some introduced, non-native species. It was a great experience but not what I would consider an incredibly wild and sporting trip. They have these ponds that, at one point in time, were stocked with these Amazonian Red-Tailed catfish and Arapima. These fish have since done quite well in the lake and have grown to impressive sizes with some of the Arapima reaching over 200lbs. Unfortunately we weren’t able to land any of the Arapima, we would see them roll with some frequency and gulp air off the surface, my buddy did manage to hook one but it ended up throwing the hook. We did manage to catch quite a few of the Red-tailed catfish that were in the lake including some large specimens. I managed to get one that was around 45lbs and my buddy Pat landed one that weighed in at 25 kilos which is about 55lbs. I’ll try to post some pictures as soon as I get them off of Pat’s camera. Right now I’m off to the Florida Keys to do a little tarpon fishing with my Dad before the guide season really picks up. That’s the beauty of the off-season in Jackson, everything shuts down so you have a lot of time to travel around. Hopefully in the next couple weeks I’ll be able to post some pictures of some nice tarpon on the fly and maybe some trout fishing pictures from the Jackson area. I hope everyone is enjoying their spring weather and I’ll see you this summer!