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.

12/17/13

Ski season is in full swing these days and it looks like it will be a little while till I do much fly fishing. I have been doing a little ice fishing recently but that's more of a social event than hardcore fishing. Hopefully I'll make it over to the South Fork here soon and I do plan to do some fishing while I'm in St. Thomas in mid-January. Here are some pictures that my girlfriend's father just sent me. They're from a fishing trip that he, my friend Alex, and I took on a local river back in late August. It was a great day of fishing with some awesome dry fly fishing... I miss those summer days.

12/3/13

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving celebration. Fishing is pretty much over for the time being. Its a full on snow storm and I usually take the months of December and January off from fishing. It's probably great skiing in the mountains but I wouldn't know because I've been in a walking boot, post ankle surgery, since November 2nd. I did manage to get out and go do some wade fishing with my buddy Pat last Monday and Tuesday. The fishing was very good during the middle of the day, a little slower early and late. I imagine the fishing would have been better if I had been a little more mobile. Its kinda tough to get around in a walking boot. Hopefully you all will have a great holiday season and I'll try to keep up on the posts over the winter. Take care!

Nov 16, 2013

Winter has set in here. This is a picture taken from my front door this morning. Fishing had been very good up on Jackson Lake before this storm rolled in. We'd been catching tons of Mackinaw Trout in water as shallow as 5 feet. I just recently had ankle surgery and I'm in a walking boot so most of my fishing season is probably over. Here are some more pictures from our guide's trip a few weeks ago. It was a fantastic trip with lots of sight fishing. Many of these trip photos, not all of them, were taken in a area that I can guide but requires a multi-day trip. If you are interested in going to this area just email me at neil.chamberlin@gmail.com and we can talk about it. Take care!

October 25th, 2013

The fishing has continued to be excellent in the area. The Snake River is fishing very well with streamers, nymphs, and dry flies midday. We're still getting hatches of blue wings and midges during the day that are bringing the trout to the surface. I was just floating the Snake on Thursday, the day after the government finally reopened the parks, with some fellow guides and we really beat them up with streamers. We caught lots of cutties in the 14-18 inch ranges and I was lucky enough to get one big fat brown that came in at 22 inches. It was excellent weather and an excellent day of fishing. I spent the past four days on our final guide's trip of the year. This is when all of our guides get together for one rowdy fishing weekend and its the last time many of us will get to fish together for the season. We had an awesome trip with great baetis hatches, tons of rising fish, and even some really good sight nymphing. The trip was an awesome way to end the season. I'll be posting a little more about it once I get some of the pictures from the other guys. Here's one picture taken by Jeff Currier (www.jeffcurrier.com) of a nice rising rainbow. This picture pretty much sums up how the fishing was.

Jackson Hole Fall Fly Fishing

My guiding season has finally started to slow down here and I've been able to fish a little bit on my own. We've had some crazy winter weather in the area recently with cold temps, lots of precipitation, and lots of wind. I was fortunate enough to go out fishing with some good clients a few days ago and we had some excellent fishing. The weather was incredibly windy but we did find some fish, including some large fish, podded up. The fish were eating both large and small dry flies and nymph droppers. One of my guys, on his first day every fly fishing, did catch a true 20 inch cutty on a dry fly. It was an awesome fish and amazingly fat. Congrats Alex! That was the last guide trip I've taken. A buddy and I did go fish a special river on tuesday and had an awesome day! The water was so low that floating was a lot of work but the fishing was pretty darn good. It was all nymph fishing but its tough to complain when you're catching fish from 14-22 inches. I'm currently visiting my folks down in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and plan to do some fishing with my dad. We're gonna fish both tomorrow and Saturday even though the weather looks awful at the moment. Hopefully I'll have some good pictures to post after this trip!