13th Day of Fly Fishing – April 4th 2025 – Ashton, Idaho
It was such a stoke! First struggling to get the boat out of the garage. Yeah, the image below depicts that pretty well. Today, it will be Molly and me, getting through the checklist, working all the kinks out and not practicing on John, or another friend. Also, Molly is not ready to join a float with another angler and God help me two. Molly is still a fishing dog in training. She is a standard schnauzer and turning five years old. Molly is a very strong alpha female and she is 100% hyper all the time. But, she is also capable of learning and now behaves being off-leash on walks at the cabin. And, she is getting better on the boat. If I’m headed out solo, I don’t hesitate to bring Molly.
Yes, perhaps you can appreciate what it was like getting the boat out of the garage
The Float
After arranging the shuttle, we arrived at the ramp at around noon and launched without incident. Beautiful day out, sunny with light winds. It was still cool out and I had a add another layer. As I was rigging, I had one fish rise above me. I figured it was a fluke, but also that the rise must have been to a midge because they were the only bugs on the water. Anyway, I put on a mother shucker and made a few casts to see if I could coax another rise, but alas, the fish wouldn’t have it. So I rigged a frenchie soft hackle on my 4wt G2 and made swings down the run, toward the first riffle. No dice. I realized low low the water level was and had to make some adjustments. WIth the same soft hackle, I swung the fly through a deeper run and no luck there either. There was a boat across from me anchored up. He was in the spot I wanted, so I waited to see if he might be ready to move, and eventually decided to slide downstream myself. A ways further down was another anchored boat, and they were in another spot that I cherished. I worked around them, stopping briefly to make some swings then anchoring up below them on a flat.
As luck would have it, where I anchored was exactly the spot where the fish began to rise. It was a bit tough to read the water. The hatch was a baetis hatch, not certain if they were BWO’s though. Very few duns coming down, mostly dead flies, or spinners and smaller than the typical BWO, around a size 18. So I rigged my 3wt G2 and tied on a parachute baetis pattern in a size 18. The first several casts either missed or refused, so I added a CDC mole fly on behind the parachute. The mole fly, once the CDC get wet, rides in the film and is impossible to see, but the parachute had a hi vis post that I could see really well. Finally, I had an eat on the mole fly and landed a rather smallish brown trout. Smallish by Henry’s Fork standards anyway.However, more casts with this combo did not result in more eats. So I needed to make another change. I took off both flies this time and went with a last chance cripple. The LC cripple is my favorite on the Henry’s Fork during a baetis hatch. Works great on the ranch during a flav hatch too! After many casts I finally had an eat on this fly as well. This fish played with me for awhile, but did not make it to the net.
At this point the hatch was winding down and additional casts did not produce any results, so it was time to move on. In summary, I decided that I wasn’t able to match the hatch, and though I believe I had made good fly choices, had a lots of good, drag free drifts, I was not rewarded in the way expected, had the fly been right. I’m sure you could also chalk it up to very picky Henry’s Fork trout. On the rest of the float, I spent a lot of time scanning the water looking for heads or any sign of a rise. Nada!
As I floated downstream with Molly, I had a deep appreciation for the day and how sparklingly beautiful it was. Saving time for my secret spot, which I always do, I made good time on the lower section. This is unfortunate, as I would have prefered to stop several times to cast to rising trout, but that was not to be today.
Stopping at the secret spot, I had immediate concerns. There were no rising fish and really no insects on the water at all, that would inspire a rise. So instead I swung my soft hackle patterns through the flat, wading across it systematically. The water is the right speed in this spot for a soft hackle to work effectively, but no dice today. So with that, we pulled anchor and headed toward the ramp.
The first float of 2025 was now in the books!
