12th Day of Fly Fishing – April 3rd – South Fork of the Snake – Secret Spot
Here we are April 3rd, should be having BWO hatches every day. Anyway, I had been tying two patterns for fishing rivers now. The first was a sparkle wing RS2 emerger. This is a Charlie Craven pattern and it is the bomb! Perfect for BWO hatches in April. Works great behind your dry fly, especially when they aren’t eating it. I tied this in 18 and 22. 18 is the go-to for the BWO hatch, but the 22 works with the smaller baetis. The second fly was a Caddis emerger soft hackle. May is just around the corner and fish will start to key on this soft hackle soon!
The weather has been really crappy up here in Victor, snowing almost non-stop. But today I was ready to fish. Plus, it was just a few degrees warmer and just a few flurries here and there. Plus, I had new flies to fish! My secret spot is really not a secret. I just call it that. The Three Amigos have fished it, Douglas Barnes has fished it and my pal John has fished it. But, I fish it many times a year, particularly in the fall and winter. There are a couple of spots on the Henry’s Fork I fish multiple times a year, including the Ranch. And a spot on the Lower Provo that I have fished multiple times a year for as long as I have been in Utah. There is value in this. There are learnings. Today was a return to the secret spot.
Of course I have a game plan. There are always expectations, weather, time of year and other variables. The spot is a constant however. Changes in flow have a huge impact on how the spot fishes. Changes in numbers and species. Of course seasonal changes are the biggest, but somewhat predictable. But the weather can cause a huge shift. This year’s cool and much longer that normal winter is causing major delays in hatches. So far the BWO, maybe the caddis, but time will tell. Today my game plan was to plan on a BWO hatch. My back-up was to swing soft hackles with a BWO focus. The Scott G2 9′ 4wt was the call. I also had the streamer back-up.
By the time I got to the spot, I had worked up a major sweat. Most of the trail was packed, but as I approached the river, I got into some heavy post holing. Just brutal. Anyway, I shed my puffy jacket and my gloves. But I had to rethink the gloves. Anyway, not much happening hatch wise nut there were midges on the water. A few whitefish were picking them off from the inside of a seam. I thought I would wait and see if the hatch intensified before switching to dries. As it was, the rises were fairly sparse. Following the game plan, the back-up was swinging soft hackles with a focus on BWO. In this case a size 16 with a green pearl body with a soft hackle and silver tungsten bead. Walked out just past the seam and got an eat on the second cast. It was a whitefish but I didn’t care, I knew a trout, particularly rainbow or Cutthroat, would eat this fly. I moved out to work the faster, deeper water. My experience was the middle of the run held trout. After several long and progressively longer casts, I had a couple of tugs, but no hook-ups.
My plan was work my way back to the seam, and work it hard. Three more whitefish to hand but no trout. OK, the back-up on my back-up was …… Streamers! This time of year I always think a leech is a good bet, so I grabbed for my leech box and to my surprise, it was my woolly bugger box. These were all flies tied by someone else. The leech box flies were all tied by me! I decided to go bigger and tied on my complex twist streamer that was all marabou with lots of action. I was already thinking it a little too overcast and possibly a bit late in the year for this fly. I did get one bump, but just one. It was time to switch it up once again. This time, it was time for the caddis soft hackle. In the seam, I was getting eats right away. I knew they were those whitefish eats. Their mouths are so small, they just couldn’t get that size 12 hook in their little mouths. Then, finally I hooked one and landed it. I was running out of time and it was time for desperate measures. So, out of desperation I grabbed the wooly bugger box and found a really nice balanced leech in dark red and black. An awesome color combo. I tied on a second tippet onto the tippet ring and we were in business. Out in the middle of the current where I expected the browns to be I had a huge eat, but missed the hook-set for some reason. A few casts later and I had a big tug and set the hook. This was a reasonable fish and immediately began to take out drag. After a nice fight the single brown trout of the day was brought to the net. When I checked the rig I realized that the caddis soft hackle had broken off, which explains that big eat I had gotten earlier. Too much for the 5X tippet. Note to self: in the future go with 4X tippet!
Ended the day with 5 whitefish and a nice big brown.
