April 11th – 9th Day Fly Fishing
Waking up this morning I could hardly contain my excitement. Today John and i were going to float the Henry’s Fork (also HF) in his Clacka. It meant an early alarm this morning and lots to do before leaving. Molly and I had a great walk uphill this morning. The Tetons looked so awesome, I took the photo and had to use it as the featured image of this post.
Got to the river and spring was in the air. Even though I still had 4’+ of snow at the cabin I was delighted to see that the snow was absent at the ramp and the approach. I was planning to fish dry flies but also knowing that if there wasn’t a hatch there probably would not be rising trout either. But, I rigged my 4 wt G2 thinking that it is one rod that can do it all. We were only 150 yards downstream when I spied my first head. The BWO hatch was already underway. Split between 16s and 14s, my rule of thumb is go a size smaller, unless you are on a fishery where the fish are not that picky. In any case, the HF has predominantly picky fish! So, starting my day with a dun, I went with a size 16 BWO. After a few casts, I had both right drift and the right timing and got the eat. First thing I noticed was how smooth the drag was on my new GalvanTorque reel. Like buttah! Knew I needed to be gentle with 5X tippet! This fish was a very chunky 18″ bruiser. So it took a few minutes to get him to hand but already we had the stink off.
John was up next and we did not even need to go anywhere. There were a few new heads popping up to the right of the boat and John was ready to cast. He spent several minutes casting at each fish, but for some reason, could not get the eat. Then the rises came to a halt and we decided to move downstream. John was still up and he switched to his nymphing rig, so that put me on the sticks. We ran a few slow, deep drifts on the left bank and ultimately, he stuck a nice fish. Initially, we thought it was smaller. This big brown only began to fight when he first saw the net.
The rest of the day was tough. I wanted to continue to row and look for heads, but they were few and far between. John stuck with his nymph rig and landed a couple of smaller fish, but even with some really great runs, we were not able to connect with any fish with size again.
At the takeout, while John was retrieving the trailer, I saw a few smaller fish rising and figured, “what the heck’? It was a long cast to reach the fish I wanted, but I managed and got an eat, set the hook and landed a nice 13″er a couple of minutes later. Still waiting on the trailer, I saw smaller fish rising a few feet closer and got another eat, this time a 10″er. As the trailer was backing down I had the fish on and had to quickly land t so I could help out.
Footnote:
April 12th – 10th day of fly fishing
John and I decided to return the next day, this time to wade the area where we had fish rising to the hatch. When we arrived the day before we had launched at 1pm and already the fish were on the hatch. My thought was, why not get there around 11am the following day. John and I had got our wires crossed that morning and he ended up driving separately about an hour later. When he arrived at around noon, there were a few fish rising, that I had already cast to, but I realized that they were actually keying on the midge hatch which was much more robust at that time. The blue wings were still few and far between, but I left my midge box up at the truck. Dang!
When the BWO hatch got going, we had several fish in reach and he took the few that were closer to the bank and I stuck with the few that were closer to the middle. However, this proved to be a really tough day. John managed a few smaller fish and the ones i was casting to were really picky and I ended up makng several fly changes. Meanwhile the hatch, in spite of the clouds really began to peter out. It was really nowhere near as robust as yesterday. Unfortunate because the winds were lighter and from a more favorable direction as well.
So I got reckless and began exploring more, looking for that larger head, and those rises were becoming much more scarce. So I moved downstream 50″ or so and found one, out rising toward the middle. One the third cast, the timing and the distance were spot on and he ate.
