14th Day Fishing 2022 – South Fork of the Snake – Swan Valley, ID
As I have said before the winter flows of the South Fork make the river very wadable. Here we are March 30th and the flows are still below 1000cfs. Crazy, but they need to fill Palisades back up as the summer demands for water downstream for agriculture are very high and even higher with the hotter summers we have been having. In any case, the mean flows for March 30th are around 2,500cfs. Still wadable, makes crossings in some places more difficult
Today, I was in one of those places. As I approached my spot I noticed and man and woman gearing up to fish it. Upon my approach they became very territorial and the man had the woman go 300′ above him and start fishing and he stayed in place. As I passed him, he made it clear, that they had staked out that section and asked in a menacing voice, “so where are you going to fish?” I said, “I’m headed upstream”, getting his message loud and clear.
However, fishing upstream also meant I needed to cross the river because of blocked access on the side I was on. Thanks to the low flows, I could make that crossing. It was a little dicey but I made it. Heading up to the next riffle, I immediately had a good feeling. I wanted to try streamer fishing first. I had new Airflo Streamer Max line on my 6wt Scott G2 and wanted to try it out. I had only a handful of streamers with me and realized that this particular line sinks very fast and the heavy conehead streamers were tough to cast and further they got to the bottom too quickly and loaded up with bottom gunk, or rock snot, on every cast. As I was deciding what to do next I noticed a very robust midge hatch was happening and the fish were responding and a few Cutthroat were rising near me. So, I switched to my 4wt, knowing back at the truck that I needed a back-up and brought two rods along. I tied on a midge dry fly and cast in the spots where the fish were rising. After about 10 minutes or so, I realized these fish were not rising frequently enough and I wasn’t able to tease one up.
It was a bright sunny day and looking into the seam, I was able to see several fish moving around indicating that the were midges below the surface as well. So the decision was made to change the 4wt over to a nymph rig. One thing I really like about the 9′ 4wt is it is like the Swiss army knives of trout rods. The reason being, it casts almost everything well up to to a point. Wooly buggers and leech patterns, nymph rigs, double soft hackle rigs and dry flies. Not so great for a hopper dropper or a bigger streamer though.
Over the winter I had tied up a bunch of ‘3 dollar dip’ flies, a Nick Nickolas pattern tied by Kelly Galloup.. It is really a zebra midge with a white deer hair emergent wing. Given that a hatch was on I figured that the emergent wing was a good thing. Another good thing was I tied these flies with a tungsten bead and I wanted that fly to sink quickly in the current. For grins, I also put on a small rainbow warrior, size 18 in case they were interested in baetis as well. That proved to not be the case. As I pitched the rig about 10′ above the fish to give the flies time to sink, I had a hook-up on the first cast. On all casts after that where I connected, it was the 3 dollar dip they ate. I managed to lose a few to break-offs, but over the course of an hour or so, I had 6 cutthroats and 3 cutt-bows to hand. I even had a small whitefish eat. All with having to move.
Later, as I headed back I stopped at the spot where the couple had been fishing previously and also had a big brown eat the 3 dollar dip. All in all, a great day on the water.
