Days 62-65, July 21-24, Henrys Fork ID to Jackson WY

I'm a little past the halfway point on my journey now, just looking over the hump to the other side, reflecting on what has passed and what is to come.

In the immediate future (i.e., today), Trish will join me in Jackson, Wyoming and we'll spend several days enjoying the pleasures of one of the local resorts and touring the Tetons.  You may know Jackson as "Jackson Hole" - so-called because it was one of the locations of the annual fur trapper rendezvous back in the 1830's when the fur trade had its heyday in the mountain west.  It later became a rough-and-tumble cowboy town, and eventually a ski resort and retreat for the rich and famous.  Real estate prices, as in places like Aspen and Sun Valley, are ski-high, recession notwithstanding.  Still, it's a fun place, and the nearby Teton Range is easily one of the most awe-inspiring in America.  Here's a picture of the heart of the range, including the Grand Teton (Big Tit, in English), which I took a few days ago from the western side of the range in Idaho:

That picture now enjoys a place as the desktop background on my laptop computer.  And by the way, did you know that you can double-click on these pictures to blow them up to a larger size for better viewing?

On Day 62 I traveled from Tincup Creek through the Salt River Valley (which, like much of the general area, shows the effects of real estate spillover from Jackson - e.g., lots of vacation homes, mostly of log construction), then up through the agricultural lands between Driggs and Ashton, ID, and finally to a campground high on the Warm River.  My intent, as usual, was to avoid crowds.  The campground was lovely but I shared it with a calvary of ATV riders, including lots of teens and tweens.  I have no problem with ATVs but a troop of kids mounted on them all hours of the day and night isn't exactly subtle in terms of its detrimental impact on one's sense of quiet and solitude.  But I put that aside and, on Day 63, packed my lunch and gear into a small backpack, hooked on my bear spray and wading staff, and hiked a couple of miles downriver to get away from the hubbub.

My plan worked.  After some considerable boulder-hopping I ascended a steep ridge on the east side of the Warm River to gain perspective and find easier hiking conditions.  The ascent was difficult but worth it.  It was a little scary being alone up in the woods in bear country, but the creepiness soon dissipated when I peered over the ridge and saw a gorgeous meadow through which the Warm River sensuously snaked.  Fortunately the descent to the meadow was less daunting than the earlier ascent to the ridge, and I had any easy time navigating to the head of the meadow.  On the way I hopped over a series of springs that gushed from the side of the ridge, adding volume to the river.  Here's what the Warm River looked like from the ridge, looking downstream:

Once in the meadow I found perfect conditions for fly-fishing with my Scott Mountain Rod.  The water was clear, the bottom gravelly and firm, the streamside vegetation low and the pools and pockets deep.  The scene had trout written all over it, and before the day was done I caught about 50 brook trout.  Although native to the eastern US, not the west, brook trout have thrived in the cold mountain rivers where they were planted long ago, and are as beautiful there as anywhere else.  Here's an example of a typical brookie I landed on a well-worn Royal Wulff:

After working my way upstream through the entire meadow and well into the canyon, I finally caught so many fish that I started spending most of my time admiring the idyllic scene I was in and enjoying the solitude.  Idaho is ablaze with wildflowers this time of year and I was happy to take a close look at the many varieties, including these:

I believe the red and yellow ones in the second picture are a type of columbine - one I hadn't seen before.  The salmon-colored stem in the third picture is an Indian paintbrush, one of my favorite varieties of wildflower, usually more reddish in hue than the examples I saw here.  I also admired the lava rock formations, remnants of relatively recent volcanic activity that occurred throughout eastern Idaho.  It was all too beautiful.  I was dead-tired at the end of the day and slept right through the chaos in the campground.

The next morning I decided to tackle the nearby Henrys Fork.  You may recall from a couple of posts back that I fished a section of the Henrys Fork above Mesa Falls a week or so ago.  This time I steered Excalibur to the fabled Railroad Ranch section of the Fork that meanders through Harriman State Park (Harriman was a railroad baron way back when).  Here are a couple of views of the Ranch section of the river, the first showing a glimpse of the distant Tetons watching over a gaggle of geese and a bevy of swans in the slow current, and the second showing the surviving buildings of the Ranch, which still operates as a cattle ranch:

This section of the Henrys Fork and nearby sections of the river at Last Chance and Island Park are fabled among fly fishermen because of the spring creek nature of the river and the finicky trout that occupy it.  Apparently the fly-fishing travel agencies in France have been exceedingly effective at convincing their clients that the Henrys Fork is the place to go, because French seemed to be language of substantially all the fishermen I encountered there, including these two:

As I approached the riffle in the picture above the two Frenchmen decided to leave, which was nice of them.  I found that I had now had the Railroad Ranch section of the river all to myself, which seemed very odd considering that it is known as much for being crowded as for its challenging fishing.  There had been lots of fishermen there in the morning but apparently they had had enough humiliation, or perhaps they knew better than me that the afternoon was not the best time to linger there.  In any case, numerous trout began to rise shortly after they left, and I was able to catch six modest rainbows on small dry flies, including a tiny paradun and a slightly larger parachute Adams,  in a couple of hours.  According to the guide books, the proper approach to fishing the Fork is to locate a large rising trout and "stick with it."  That seemed to be sound advice.  The problem was, I could not locate any large trout.  With the water clarity being what it was (i.e., exceptionally crystal) and the breeze modest, one might have expected to have an easy time locating them, if they were there.  I can't help but wonder, frankly, if the hype about the Fork exceeds the reality.  Maybe the problem was my inadequacy as a fly fisherman in a truly challenging situation, but I suspect the problem was equally that the large fish are few and far between in that area of the Fork, or they were all in hiding at that time of day, perhaps tucked under the impressive weed beds in the deepest channels.  It is said that most fly fishermen walk away from the Henrys Fork humbled by its trout.  I didn't feel so much humbled as duped.  But I will always remember that it was as pretty of a scene as could be imagined and I did after all catch six trout, so I can at least say that I had some measure of success on what is reputed to be the river that requires the greatest measure of fly-fishing skill of all rivers.  I would have liked to have at least seen some evidence of a large trout, however.

That evening I hustled back southeast in Excalibur past the South Fork of the Snake River, stopping briefly to fish on a tributary called Falls Creek where I caught a couple of Snake River-finespotted cutthroat trout that were easily the equal of the rainbows I caught on the Henrys Fork.  Sunset was rapidly approaching.  After checking out a couple of campgrounds that were full, I finally settled into the last available site at the Alpine campground on the east end of Palisades Reservoir.  Fortunately the prior occupants had left firewood.  Relaxing by a campfire, I savored a glass of Oban on ice as the stars began to pop out.

The next morning - yesterday - I drove into Jackson and caught up on chores:  laundry, car wash (Excalibur and Camelot are gleaming today), air in the tires, fresh propane, etc.  In a few more hours Trish will arrive.  I can't tell you how much I look forward to her being here.  Fly fishing time may be minimal this week, but happiness will not be.

Days 59-61, July 18-20, Pebble Creek ID

As Einstein reported long ago, space and time are married at the hip. Space is curved, time is relative to the position and motion of the clock-watcher, and Rod Serling still speaks to us through a wry grin from the Twilight Zone. And it’s all rendered more complex by the persistence of memory.

Over 45 years ago, according to our shared conventions of counting the time, I hacked through willows and gingerly plodded through marshes by a little stream on the eastern slopes of the Portneuf Mountains in southeast Idaho and came upon a beaver pond. In that quiet water several trout scattered in reaction to my sudden presence. The visible pool was abandoned but I knew the trout were still there, hiding in the margins. I quietly dipped the little lure on my spinning rod into a small, dark hole beneath overhanging branches and felt the tug of an 8-inch rainbow trout. My eyes were as big as Frisbees when I pulled that fish from the water. It was the first trout I ever caught - perhaps the first fish of any kind. The scene is embossed on my brain for as long I shall live.

Yesterday, caught in a time warp, I hacked through willows and plodded through marshes by a little stream - the same stream, Pebble Creek - flowing from the flanks of Haystack Mountain and Bonneville Mountain in the Portneuf Range. This time I was armed with a short, 3-weight Scott Mountain Rod and countless hours of experience hunting trout on small streams across the country. The trout had no chance, and in a short span of minutes I caught a couple of 8-inch cutthroats. Not rainbows. In the decades since I last visited Pebble Creek, stocking of non-native trout in the upper reaches of the stream has ceased, and the native cutts are the primary residents in this sanctuary. Fine with me.  Here's what a typical hole on little Pebble Creek looks like today, just as it did when I first trod its banks as a boy:

Soon I happened upon a long run of deeper water and cast a parachute Adams into a seam at the head of the pool. A tiny trout instantly hit the fly but I failed to hook him. I was about to move on when I noticed a long, sinewy shape slither out of the deep pocket in the main current and briefly occupy an eddy next to it. For several seconds I gaped at the long, green-backed fish with its reddish fins - telltale signs of a mature Yellowstone cutthroat. This was not a normal resident of Pebble Creek, I knew. It could only be a cutt that had migrated up the creek from the Portneuf River to spawn, and was slow to return home. As my heart began to race, the cutt dissolved back into the cover of the current.

Obviously my parachute Adams hadn’t impressed him, so I decided to attach to the hook bend of the Adams about 18 inches of fluorocarbon tippet, a small flashback pheasant tail nymph and a number 6 shot. That process took a few minutes. Just as I finished and was set to make a cast with my new and improved rig, the large cutt reappeared at the tail of the current and slowly dropped back, soon passing right beneath me, sneaking away as if he knew he was about to be targeted. As I cursed my luck, he slid into the rapids at the tail of the pool and disappeared into downstream narrows.

I made a decision then that I rarely make, which was to backtrack. I knew there was another long pool about twenty yards downstream beneath the narrow rapids because I had just caught a couple of fish there. It was difficult to negotiate the thick willows to get back there, but I believed there was a good chance the big cutt would linger in that pool and I might spot him again. And so it was. When I arrived at the downstream pool and poked my head over the protective brush, the cutt was quietly finning in a very shallow eddy, facing downstream near the tailout of the pool. Again, heart palpitations. The problem was, as any experienced fly fisherman can tell you, that getting a fly to drift naturally in an eddy across a strong current is an exceedingly difficult task. I’ve heard it said a thousand times that “a fish doesn’t get to be that big by being stupid.” A good drift was a prerequisite for fooling that trout, and I didn’t think I had a chance. Nevertheless, catching a trout of his stature in Pebble Creek was probably a once-in-a-lifetime affair even if I fished there regularly, so I slowly positioned myself upstream, behind the finning levithan, to give it a college try.  Here's the fish, trying hide beneath the twinkling glare:

In an overabundance of caution, my first couple of casts landed a foot or so behind the fish, producing no reaction. As I feared, the drift of the fly was unacceptable even if I had cast further - my leader was in the current, swept away too soon. I took a step forward and tried again. This time the Adams, still trailing the nymph, landed about six inches in front and to the right of the nose of the trout. I figured the fish would either spook and run or would ignore the flies. In the best case, I imagined, he might show an interest in the nymph before the current pulled it away. For an agonizingly long time - probably only a few seconds though it seemed an interminable period - the big cutt eased toward my flies an inch at a time. I had put as much slack into the leader as I could manage with my cast and a quick mend, but I knew the current would grab it at any moment. Miraculously, the flies just hung there, barely moving with the natural backflow of the eddy. The cutt’s nose inched forward until it touched the Adams. It was all I could do to let the fly sit while the cutt inspected it. I was sure I was in for rejection. Then boom! The trout sucked in the Adams!

I cannot describe my joy. As I set the hook and struggled to hold the big fish in the pool and land him (or more likely, her), I thought back on my boyhood experience. Maybe I stood in the same pool under the same bright skies in the shadow of the same mountains, I’m not sure. But in the present as is in the past, my excitement was beyond measure - pure ecstasy. Sometimes, though it happens all too rarely, everything goes just the way you plan it. Your stealth is stealthy, your fly is the right fly and holds its drift, the trout is fooled, and he’s yours. And when it all works out and you look around at the incredible natural scene that surrounds you and your prize, joy is almost overwhelming.

I hadn’t brought my regular cameras but I did have my smartphone, so I tried to take a picture of the trout as I held it in my hand. Problem was the cutt was too long to fit in the picture, even though I held out my arm as far as possible and positioned the phone behind my shoulder.   I have five photos of the rear 2/3 of the fish, not respectable enough to post here.  However, I was able to measure him against my rod for later verification of his length and I got some pictures of him in the water. At 19.5”, he was a veritable Moby Dick by the standards of Pebble Creek. Not a tarpon by any means, but a fish I will always be proud to have captured and released.

There is so much more I could tell you about the past few days. When I can, I will write another retrospective post to describe my day in Pocatello, Idaho, where the time warp fully enveloped me. I would also like to tell you about the quiet camping spots I occupied the past two nights - one in the Portneuf Range and the other in the Caribou Rnage - and the campfire meals I enjoyed there. Or the fish I caught on the Portneuf River (including the big one that got away off a gifted streamer) and on Toponce Creek (before a thunderstorm drove me from it) and on Tincup Creek. Or the time I spent with Roger Thompson of Portneuf River Outfitters - thanks for the info, Roger! Or the incident in the storm when I helped a drenched cowgirl open a stuck gate that trapped her and her soaked horse and dog. Or the hundreds of white terns wheeling around mysteriously in the mountain passes east of Gray’s Lake NWR. Or the intense cold that settled on Camelot, my righteous Northstar camper, last night. Or the fortitude and stamina of Excalibur, my Chevy Silverado, who recently has performed the kind of difficult, high-clearance-required, off-road stunts she was acquired to do, all without a misstep.

There is so much I could tell you. Since time has a way of folding back upon itself, I’ll hope for another chance in the future to relive and transcribe those for-now untold experiences. In the future I will tell of the past which is my present. That’s why I’m the once and future fly fisherman - I love it!