6/24/14

The fishing has been picking up in a serious way here recently. I've stopped fishing the Firehole at this point because of warmer waters and because the rivers in our area have begun to fish better. The Snake is beginning to clear and fish with the Snake right below the dam pretty clear at this point in time but the lower river getting the better hatches. The Green and South Fork are also fishing well, primarily with nymphs and streamers but with some dry fly fishing starting to pick up. A buddy of mine caught this massive fish on Sunday while we were floating. The fish initially looked at his indicator then dropped down in the water column and ate his nymph.

6/13/14

Sorry for the long time between posting. Unfortunately we're dealing with high water conditions in the area so there hasn't been a whole lot to write about. There has been some great fishing on some local lakes, ones that can't be guided on, but the rivers are still very high. I've been guiding on the Firehole up in Yellowstone quite a bit, the fishing has been excellent up there but the weather has been pretty poor. I was supposed to be up there today but the forcast was for sustained heavy winds with gusts up to 37 mph so we decided to cancel. When the weather has cooperated, the dry fly and nymph dropper fishing has been excellent for the browns and rainbows in the Firehole. The prime fishing window has been from about 10am until when it tapers off around 2-3pm. The Green, New Fork, and South Fork should be fishing here shortly. The flows are dropping and the rivers have begun to clear. It won't be long until we're having excellent fishing on those rivers. I'll try to keep you all updated as that happens.

5/10/14

May is one of my favorite months in Jackson! Its a great time to be outside on the nice days, its sleeting outside right now, and there are a million different things to do. Fishing is typically inconsistent at this time of year, you will have some of your best days in April and May and some of your worst days, but there are other great outdoor activities. I've taken up antler hunting and morel hunting as great spring activities. I've spent the last 10 days searching for both antlers and morels with pretty good sucess. I've spent so much time doing this that I haven't actually fished much but I do hear that the South Fork is starting to pick up with big rubberleg nymphs and egg patterns being key. I'll try to keep my blog updated with with the most recent reports as the conditions change.

4/28/14

Winter weather has come back into the valley recently and fishing has been put on hold for the time being. Before the weather rolled in the fishing had been excellent on the Snake River with both nymphs and streamers. The Snake always fishes really well before runoff hits, but exactly when that is is very unpredictable. We have been fishing some nearby areas and been doing quite well as long as the weather holds up.

While I was down in Colorado a few weeks ago, my mom dug up a few interesting photos that she had found. These photos were of my first day ever fly fishing on the Colorado River back in 1997. Its interesting to think about how that one fishing experience has had such an influence on my life since then. Even though we only caught two fish that day, I was addicted to fly fishing from that moment on.

Sayulita, Mexico

I just got back from a week long trip to Sayulita, Mexico for some surfing, fishing, and relaxing. I also got engaged to my longtime girlfriend Annie while on the trip, so the fishing took a bit of a backseat to that. The fishing was pretty good overall, nothing incredible, but we did catch a number of fish and had consistent action. We caught Bonita, Skipjack Tuna, Jack Crevalle, Snappers, some assorted other Jacks, and some Sierra Mackerel. We did see some Dorado while we were down there, but they were either uninterested in feeding or they were gone before we had a good shot at them. We had our best success either finding diving birds and bait balls or live bait chumming around structure. We used mostly 2-3 inch sardine imitations on both floating lines and heavy sink lines, we were also able to catch some fish on small poppers which was a real treat. Our guides were some real characters which added to the overall experience of the whole trip. We still have early spring conditions here in the valley, its snowing outside as I write this. The fishing has been very good but it is always weather dependent this time of year. If the weather is good the fishing can be excellent, if its cold and snowing, you're probably better off skiing. It looks like our weather is going to very good this next week so the fishing should be excellent.

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.