Posts
First I must pay homage to my close friend Don (Chip) Walter, who is featured in the short video at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ux06_oYnt4
The video was shot the day before I left Wyoming and two days before Chip had an accident while working on a construction project at his cabin, breaking a leg and a wrist. He's now laid up in casts and is not nearly as happy as he was when the video was shot. It could have been worse - he was operating a chain saw when he fell from his deck. At least he still has both his arms and legs. I don't mean to make light of it. I hope he retains fond memories of the day the video was taken.
As I've reported on several occasions recently, finding good water in the rivers and streams of the northern Rockies is not an easy task these days - heavy snow runoff continues in most places. However, if you search hard enough, you can find it, as Chip and I did on Friday. Laughing off reports of a mama grizzly and cubs in the area but packing plenty of bear spray, we hiked up the South Fork of the Wood River, an obscure tributary of the Wood River that flows into the Greybull River, which flows into the Bighorn River, which flows into the Yellowstone River, which flows into the Missouri River, etc.. There we found Yellowstone cutthroats, not as sizeable as those we typically catch in the Wood or Greybull, but large and numerous enough to satiate us for a couple of days or, in Chip's case, perhaps for a couple of months. Best regards, Chip. I wish you a speedy recovery.
Chip's calamity had not yet occurred when I powered Excalibur through Yellowstone Park on Saturday. There I paused to watch Old Faithful erupt while enjoying a frozen yogurt cone. The massive spew was impressive but didn't move me nearly so much as did my first glimpse of the Teton Range rising in the southwest as I descended the pass from Pahaska Teepee down to Yellowstone Lake. The Tetons brought back many memories of childhood, such as the time I squeezed myself into the slot behind the two seats in my brother's Austin Healy Sprite and rode in it with my parents to Teton National Park where my brother had a summer job. That memory turned into a fountain of recollections by the time I got to Pocatello, Idaho late Sunday. More on that in the next post.
Driving on from Old Faithful, I flashed by the Firehole, Madison and Gibbon Rivers and was strongly tempted to stop. The water was in superb condition and I saw a couple of fly fishermen landing fish. I sorely wanted to try my hand, but fate had something else in store for me, and I soon passed into West Yellowstone, Montana and then into Idaho, generally following the course of the Henrys Fork of the Snake River. The Henrys Fork is one of the west's most famed and popular fly fishing rivers. Large stretches of it are backed up by several reservoirs that effectively convert the Henrys Fork into a series of tailwater fisheries with varying characteristics. One characteristic shared by most of the tailwaters is that they are very crowded with fishermen, as evidenced by the numerous fly shops, outfitters, RV parks, and fishing lodges along their banks, as well as the hundreds of trucks and SUVs parked in every little burg, many of them trailing drift boats and rafts. It's discouraging if you're trying to find a quiet place to camp and fish, as I was.
But you know how I am. If there's a quiet fishing place to be found, I have a good chance of finding it. Armed with a Forest Service map, Excalibur and I ventured into the backwoods, bouncing through muddy potholes and ruts on several dirt roads just north of Upper Mesa Falls until we eventually dropped into a canyon and descended to the river. Pulling up to a boat ramp at the end of the road, I found a single vehicle containing a sole passenger, so I stopped to inquire whether I could camp there. Soon I was engaged in a productive and pleasant conversation with T.C., a fly-fishing guide from Teton Valley Lodge who was kind enough to give me the low-down on that stretch of the river and even a few stonefly imitations that he plucked from his well-worn cowboy hat. T.C. had a couple of clients, nice gents from Kansas City, who were wrapping up an "epic day" by wade-fishing near the ramp after having floated several miles in T.C.'s drift boat. I took a few pictures of them standing in the river and off they went with fond goodbyes. In a matter of minutes I popped Camelot's top up, strung up my Sage Z-Axis 5-weight, and was in the river casting one of the yellow stoneflies T.C. had given me. Here's a glimpse of the river I was graced to sample:
It was all too beautiful except for one thing - apparently the fish were done eating stoneflies for the day. In an hour or so of evening fishing I only enticed one fish to rise, so I decided to make dinner and get a fresh start in the morning. I was a bit frustrated when three fisherman entered the river by the ramp, having hiked down the road from somewhere. But as I dined inside Camelot to avoid the gathering gnats and mosquitos, I enjoyed a panoramic view of the river and decided to watch the interlopers for a while. At first I thought they looked like a trio of rubes because their hats, vests and waders seemed odd. (Yes, fashion has infected even fly fishing.) But I could see that they were good casters, and I could hear their voices clearly carrying across the water. They were speaking French! That explained their odd dress, I suppose. My American fly fishing outfits probably look ridiculous in France.
As the sun dropped behind the western ridge of the canyon and the twilight lingered, I patiently watched the Three Musketeers - for so I had dubbed them - as they consistently failed to catch any fish. Then suddenly, when one of them threw an unknown fly into the mid-river riffle right in front of me, I heard a shout: "Beeg feesh! Beeg feesh!" That got my full attention. Peering down on the scene, I saw that there was indeed a commotion on the end of the guy's line, but his rod didn't have much of a bend in it and so the fish didn't seem very big to me. I guess it's a matter of which standards you apply. Perhaps it was a big fish by French standards. I'm not aware of France being an important trout-fishing destination, although I do recall that Hemingway had some luck there almost a hundred years ago. In any case, the trout unhitched itself from the guy's fly before either of us got a good look at it. Then on the next cast the same thing happened, but this time the fly rod bent a little deeper and I was almost starting to be impressed. At least he was hooking up, which was better than I had done. What little success he had was not enjoyed by his les amis. As deepening darkness finally drove them from the river, I watched them jaunt merrily up the road and heard them laughing. At one point - I swear - they joined one another arm in arm. All for one and one for all!
I woke up Sunday morning just as the sun lit up the high rock wall that lined the west bank of the river. It was exactly the kind of sight I hoped to see often when I planned my trip. There was not another human in evidence, and in fact there was not to be one all day long. I casually ate breakfast, loaded a fanny pack with the proper fly fishing accoutrements, pulled on my waders and boots, applied sunscreen and bug repellent, attached my bear spray (again, amid reports of mother grizzlies and cubs in the area) and a wading staff, and launched myself into the wide, shallow river. I'll give it to the Henrys Fork - there may be no more beautiful river in existence. Even though it's large, you can wade it in most places, and the river bottom is a wonderous thing replete with patches of gravel, healthy vegetation and lava rocks - a seemingly perfect environment for trout and the flies they feed on. The bugs were very evident, as they had been the previous evening. All the usual suspects were there: mayflies and caddis of various sizes and a few big, buzzing stoneflies - the very bug I was trying to imitate with the lead fly on the end of my tippet.
The Henrys Fork also has a reputation for being a tough place to catch fish even though the trout are plentiful. Since I was in a lightly-fished area occupied predominantly by rainbow trout that are smaller than the average Henrys Fork trout, I thought I would have no problem. As it happened, I only caught eight rainbows in about six hours of fishing, and all of those were on nymphs. In the last half hour, having returned to the riffle below Camelot where I had seen one of the Musketeers hook a few fish the prior evening, I tied on a trusty parachute Adams (about which I wrote in one of my earliest blog posts), and my catch rate went up dramatically. The trout weren't particuarly hefty, but each time I hooked one I could not stop myself from shouting into the empty canyon, "Beeg feesh! Beeg feesh!" Did I make a sound? I think so, because there was a dazzling bald eagle flying overhead, and surely he wondered why his fishing grounds were suddenly plagued with foreigners.
Anyway, it's a good thing I didn't fall in and knock myself out, because I was only a short distance from Upper and Lower Mesa Falls. If I had been carried away in the current, my ultimate fate would have been sealed here:
I could go on and on with this post and if you've read this far you're wondering if it will ever end. I badly want to tell you about my day in Pocatello but I'll save that for next time. I just want to share two last photos with you now. I mentioned the Tetons earlier. Here is the heart of the range in a photo taken across an expanse of emerald farm fields not far from Driggs, Idaho:
It's hard to argue that the Tetons aren't the most beautiful mountains in America. And speaking of beauty, my last photo has nothing to do with it. Some of you may be wondering how much of a wild man I've turned into after two solid months of camping and fishing. Let me assure, not at all, as you can see for yourself:
The picture doesn't do full justice because you can barely see the "wings" of hair sticking out over my ears, which also look really great popping out from under a hat. Anyway, it's not how you look, it's how you feel. Right? I feel great.
No comments:
Post a Comment