Ski Season

Ski season is here in Jackson. I doubt I'll be doing a whole lot of fishing for the next month or two here. I'll try and keep posting some skiing picks here in the future and hopefully in a few months I'll be back to fishing. Here are a few pictures and videos of my time teaching my dog to ski. He's getting the hang of it but he still has alot to learn.

11/1

Winter has arrived in the area. Fishing has slowed down overall, but there is still some good fishing to be had in the right places at the right times. I was down in Colorado a few weeks ago and ran into some nasty weather but some good fishing. My dad and I had some great streamer fishing with some big fish being caught. Most of the fish were in the shallows in one to two feet of water. We also had an excellent baetis hatch during the day that provided some great dry fly fishing. Hopefully I'll get a few more good days in here this year before the ski season starts.

10/17

I went down to do some camping with the girlfriend here a couple weeks ago. We met halfway between here and Denver to do some camping on the North Platte River. This wasn't a fishing specific trip, but I did manage to get some fishing in while I was there. The fishing was quite good, with lots of fish caught on nymphs and some nice fish caught on streamers. Overall it was a great trip with some good fishing.

9/30

Sorry for the lapse in posts, I've been very busy between teaching school and going back to college. I've fished/guided some around the area and went up to Montana for a few days, a couple weeks ago. The fishing in this area has been very good with excellent dry fly action during the middle of the day. They've recently started dropping the water levels to winter flows around here... I'll let you know what that does to the fishing in the area. Its getting into big brown trout time around here.

8/28

School has started at this point so I'll only be guiding on the weekends from here on out. I've guided the past two days on the snake and did have some time to finally fish on my own. The fishing has been excellent with big dries working early and PMD's coming off in the late morning. Streamers are working on cloudy days, but are certainly slower during the sunny times of day. Here are a few fish from recent days, one of the cutties was actually over 20inches but doesn't look like it in the pictures.

8/19/11

Fishing has picked up in the area recently. The Snake is fishing very well with dries, both small and large, and we're seeing some good fish up top. The South fork, unfortunately, is still a nymphing game and I'm skeptical that it will ever fish well with dries this year. The green is still fishing, but its a super early morning fishery that will shut down by noon or one. I'll try and keep up the posting after the school year starts here. I hope everyone is having a good year. It should be a great fall!

8/5/11

Fishing has taken a drastically positive turn in the past week. The Snake has started to clear and is fishing well with dry flies, the Green continues to fish well, and the South Fork is fishing much better than it has been. I just got back from a trip on the upper South Fork and the fishing was better than expected. It was all nymphs and streamers but the water levels looked good and the visibility was more than enough. When the bugs get going, that place it going to explode! Here are some pictures from a few days I fished with the Lenzen group, some good guys who are fun to fish with.

8/1

It's amazing that August is already here and the fishing season is just getting started. We've had some good fishing in the area with the best fishing coming in the early hours of the day or under cloudy skies. Streamers have worked well along with good hatches of gray drakes, PMDs, and yellow sallies. The south fork currently remains off color even with the water finally stabilizing. Hopefully it will begin to shape up here a little later in the week. Flat Creek just opened up today and should be fishing well. I have a trip there tomorrow so I'll have a better idea of the fishing conditions shortly. Here are a few pictures from some recent trips in the area.

7/22

Fishing is starting to pickup in the area. The South Fork is fishing well with nymphs, the Green is fishing well with both nymphs and some dry flies, and the Snake is fishing well below the dam. Here are a few pictures a client sent me from his trip last year. All the pictures are from rivers he fished in the area last year.

7/11

What can I say... the fishing here is still poor and the water is still high. The South Fork had been fishing until recently when they bumped the flows from 17,000cfs to 25,000cfs in one day. At these flows its borderline unsafe to even float the river. The good news is that, even though the flows are high, they do seem to have peaked and are finally starting to come down. Hopefully at least the Green and the Salt will be fishing here shortly.
A buddy and I took a few days this past week to go up to montana and fish. We fished the Beaverhead for two days and had some decent fishing, but the river was pretty darn crowded. I guess that's to be expected when its the only clean water in the area. Here are a few pictures from the trip.

Gros Ventre

Here's a picture of a big cutthroat I caught this April up on the Gros Ventre river. This fish measured a fat 22 inches and came up out of a deep hole to eat a streamer. This is the biggest fish I think I've ever landed out of the Gros Ventre and was a good start to the season.

Lake Fishing

Well its been more lake fishing so far this year. Most of our rivers are still dirty so lakes seem to have been the best options. A buddy and I went up to a lake here in the Gros Ventre range this past week. This lake is only about 40-50 miles from Jackson but takes over 1.5 hrs to get to because of the "road", if you can call it a road, conditions. When we got within about 50 yards of the lake we encountered a huge downed tree that blocked the road. We had to move some big boulders and off-road it around the tree just to get the boat in the water. After all this work we were fortunately rewarded with some good fishing. Nothing lights out, but some consistent fishing for some fat cutties in the 15-19 inch range. They all ate either scud patterns or buggers stripped within 10 ft of the surface. The word is that the South Fork is starting to fish here so I may head over and check that out tomorrow to see what's happening.

6/12

Not a whole lot of new information to report. We've had warmer weather recently but still alot of rain. Most of the rivers in the area are high and dirty but it should start to stabilize a little more shortly. I'm done working at the school on wednesday here so hopefully I'll be able to fit in a few longer fishing trips in the next few weeks. Until it starts to clear I'll be spending most of my time on the lakes.

Is it June or November?

We spent the past weekend fishing up on Hebgen Lake in Montana. The fishing was good but the weather was terrible. On our second day it snowed between three and four inches on us. Hopefully summer gets here soon.

5/2

Finally! We were fortunate to have some good fishing weather this weekend. I managed to get out with some friends and had a pretty good day throwing streamers for some big fish. We were on a pretty low fish density stretch of water but managed 10 fish in the boat including one brown that measured just over 20 inches and one that was 21 inches. Not bad for early May.