3/12/14 Spring Is Here

Spring has come to the valley here. The temps have been consistently into the upper 30;s and low 40's most days. At this point our snow pack is at 144% of normal so we fishermen are hoping that it stops snowing and we continue to have this warm weather to get our runoff started. A buddy and I managed to get some fishing in a week ago. We had a great time and the fishing was excellent. The rainbows were just starting to spawn and the fish were keying in on a combination of midges and eggs. Just one thing that I feel I should mention with spring upon us, when you do see spawning fish I would ask that you please not fish directly to those spawning fish. Its very tempting when you see large fish in very shallow water to cast at them, but that can be very damaging to a fishery. Those fish that are trying to spawn have enough to worry about without fishermen trying to rip them off of their redds. If you do see trout spawning activity, you can always fish the deeper pools and runs downstream of them, there will always be fish in those deeper areas.

The Snake River is looking great right now. I took my dog for a walk down by the river earlier today and I saw a ton of fish feeding on midges. The fishing shoudl be very good until runoff rolls around.

Late Winter Update

Hi everyone and sorry for the long delay between posts. Winter is finally starting to let up just a little bit an I'll hopefully be fishing more often in the near future. I haven't fished much this winter but I did get to do some saltwater fishing this January down in St. Thomas. My dad and I spent a day going for both tarpon and snook while we were on a family trip. We had a number of snook follow and I ended up hooking two large tarpon in the 60-90lb class, but they both ended up jumping and throwing the hook. It was some unsucessful fishing, kinda tought when you only have one day, but still alot of fun.

My buddy Pat and I did go fish the South Fork the other day. The fishing was good but not great, the weather didn't quite cooperate as we had planned. I tookt he dog for a walk down by the Snake two days ago and it looks ready to go. There were a few fishermen down there and I could see a number of fish suspended and feeding up in the water column. I should have brought my rod. The skiing here has been excellent for the whole month of February. It has been very water, low thirties up to the low fourties, and it has been snowing a ton. As I look out my window right now it looks like I've got a foot of new snow on my car and its still dumping. A buddy and I went for a big tour up on Togwotee Pass the other day and had a great time. We were exploring a new area and got all the way to the top but had to be very careful and conservative on the way down because of unstable snow conditions. There had been alot of avalanche activity int he area and we had some snow "whoomphing" under our feet. We had gotten up there too late in the day so we needed to just safely creep down the mountain. Beautiful day though and a neat area.

Our water conditions are looking great at the moment. We have 137% of water content in our snow pack. At this point I am less concerned with having low water and a little more concerned with having too much water. At this rate much of the snow at low levels is starting to melt off so that should help to moderate our run-off. We'll see how things goo from here but I don't think it will be another low water year. It won't be long until we're catching some nice spring fish.