Sure Enough

A little chilly and Henry's Fork country now. 32 and partly cloudy on the Silver Creek this morning.  No precip.

Last Chance at LC?

I had just made it to the MO 10 days ago when a family emergency pulled me back home. I drove 10 hours on no sleep.  I had been purposely avoiding the place because it's so good and it's hard to go anywhere else afterwards. The crisis is over and I head north once again with two nice warm days remaining in the weekly forecast.  Last Chance it is, in more ways than one.

The afternoon I arrive its blowing and feels a little cool.  I manage a few smaller fish on baetis, but no takers on the winged beetle that they loved a year ago.  Too windy to present it right?  Probably.  There's baetis on the water, but I struggle to turn over the tippet in the wind, even with it cut in half.

The next morning with the sun shining bright and no wind, I tie on the beetle and proceed to feed.  They eat it all day.  Some really nice ones.  It's the day I came for.

Overnight it clouds up a little, and there's even some very early morning showers that stop around sunrise.  The day remains partly cloudy, but the hatch is lighter and there are fewer targets than yesterday.  I manage a couple good eats at the jam, and a couple more down at millionaires in the evening.

My preference is still for the sunny and calm! Apparently the fish and bugs think so too. These last two days might be the last two really warm ones in this neck of the woods until June.  Snow in the forecast starting tomorrow night, so I'm headed to lower elevation and latitude.  The MO once again alludes me.  Maybe I should have gone earlier when I had the chance.

I can't ever remember the outflow this low. The foundation says that with the buffalo, the flow at LC is around 300, but they also say the outflow is 100, not the 53 that is shown.  This is part of a scheme to "save" water for higher winter flows. They will increase the flow in late November or December to try and keep more fish alive through the coldest part of the winter.  Sounds good on paper, but . . . moving on.

She's low, that's for sure.

Really low, and clear too!

Damn low.

Something about it, in a size 10 on 3x no less!  

That crane in the background is an ominous sign of things to come: A brand new 6-lane Sinclair gas station with a big new Ace Hardware on the east side of highway 20 in beautiful downtown Last Chance.  It's between Brad's old Grubstake store and Henry's Fork Anglers.

Livingston

Here I go, back to 6x, the little 3wt., and the small stuff.  These fish are easier than the ones in that Idaho creek though.  Not gimmes by any means, but more user friendly even with the same little baetis. This creek can be really good right now with favorable cloudy weather, but I can't seem to buy that perfect overcast day yet. It's the right change from hucking that streamer for two and a half days though, and the Fork isn't going to get any better anytime soon.  The calendar shows nearly wide open for two days, so its a no-brainer move.  Temperatures are still running around 80, though a slow drop is in the forecast over the next week.  I'm a week early but I'll gladly soak up the last of these warm days standing in a cold creek.  Day two is cloudy but blows all day, so it's just a donation to the Smith foundation for spring creek access.

Ranch

Despite it's chronic decline, the river still holds some fish.  Not many, but as I told some regulars again, if there's only one or two left on the whole Ranch, I'll go looking.  There's talk that Idaho Fish and Game is going to plant roughly 500 rainbows from the South Fork next month, fish large enough to survive the winter.  Not sure how I feel about that, but they're not hatchery fish and they're born from roughly the same drainage.  Apparently they used to plant here in the 70's, so it's not unprecedented.

For now, the water has cleared from the horrible turbidity of summer.  For the first time all season, I look down from the bluff over Millionaires and can see several nice fish.  There's hope.  One is even rising to little bwo's. I fish through the deeper lower end of the run in the evening and take a couple.  Next morning I start higher up on the shallow flat and finish a hundred yards below the bluff. I never see another angler.  Five toads make the big net. (Hey, I'm an old bass fisherman from way back, and that's what we called 'em😂)

I later manage a decent one up at Last Chance with a short swing through the log jam at sunset.  I don't see alot of fish, but at this point I'll take what she gives me.  There's hardly anyone here, just a couple of pairs/groups in and out of LC.

I haven't thrown at a rising fish. The very light baetis hatch gives reason to hunt, scan, and just keep an eye out. I try to analyze every little ring of the rise.  There's no targets other than some little guys and the one I saw rising on arrival at noon from the bluff.  I've got more mahoganies in my fly box than I've seen on the water.  Rob says the trout changed their feeding habits due to the dirty water this summer. Who really knows?  Fewer fish and none rising refreshes the memory of what the bamboo guy showed me a few years ago on the same bluff in late September. "You're not supposed to do this here, but sometimes ya just gotta do it."

So I go from microscopic bugs, 6x, and mostly small creek fish to 3x and a swimming leech/sculpin over an inch long.  It's a sigh of relief really. Long crisp casts that clear the weeds, and let 'er swing.  Harder on the casting arm, but easier on the eyes and mind.  The steelhead guys have described this in volumes.  It's different, and mesmerizing in its own way.

I fish 6 hours on the last day as the morning starts out with some clouds.  I hunt heads from the bluff, pelican island, and both sides all in between.  No bugs besides some morning baetis, no good risers, two on the leech coming home.  So I end up catching about 10 large fish in 2 1/2 days and turn a few others.  

Adrenaline still races with the wake and the take from a big boy.  We're connected like a bolt of lightning between the cloud and the sky, both feeling the charge on each end. When they head for the weeds, I can pull 'em out.  Long, fat Millionaires rainbows that I'll otherwise not hook in this in-between season under bright sunny skies. The confirmation that they remain soothes the sting of the grim bigger picture. I need this going into winter.  

Still some pigs living here.

Setting a little more south 

Sometimes ya gotta . . . 

Picture doesn't do this one justice.  Biggest Ranch fish I've netted.  My hands didn't come close to holding it.  Tried to balance it on my palm, but it was off to the races.

This bend used to have a pod every fall.  Not this year.

A tank here that cooperated for a few seconds.

The Classroom

There are fast flowing rivers and creeks.  There are tailwaters, often slower and clearer.  There are spring creeks with clear water and a mix of currents.  Then there's Silver Creek.  I've never seen anything like it.  Slow moving nearly everywhere.  Water as clear as it gets.  Trout that see you coming before they see you, or hear you, or sense you, however that works.  And good luck casting a fly to them if they're paying attention.  When they get distracted I can get a fly to 'em, but more often than not it's dragging or not floating naturally in the jumble of surface currents created by weeds growing everywhere.  

Some of my regular haunts like the Ranch and the Missouri are child's play compared to this place, where you get schooled all day by 12 inchers.  Sure, it can be easier with a good hatch of larger bugs like pmd's or mahoganies, and maybe some cloud cover. But right now it's sunny and calm with size 25 1/2 baetis on the menu for the most part.  There is an occasional mahogany coming down, but the fish are experts at recognizing the real one from a really good fake one.  Nearly every natural that drifts over some fish ends up breakfast.  Nearly every imposter gets ignored or occasionally refused. A refusal is almost a victory.

So a little ways into my fly fishing journey I've had to learn and adapt again.  I do that to preserve sanity on The Preserve.  I've never been a proponent of fishing two flies.  Not a hopper dropper, not two nymphs, not tandem streamers, and not double dries.  But, I can't see these tiny-ass little baetis I'm using at the distances I need to deliver them. And they're so tiny that they're hard to deliver, even if I can miraculously see the damn thing. There are few close range fish, I'm casting 15 to 25 feet of fly line, plus 15 ft of leader and 6x tippet. So what's a blind man to do? 

I guess it's pretty common for people to fish a larger dry with a smaller one behind it. It's often mentioned with trico fishing.  So I decide to tie on a size 20 CDC baetis emerger (Sri Lanka/Veil Emerger), and attach some greased microscopic flies that a fish might actually eat just a few inches behind it.  The tiniest soft hackles I have, the ones that have been working at close range in other waters. Harrop's CDC emergers #20 and #22 that always work so well on the Livingston creeks, again at closer range. Some old #22 and #24 rs2 type emergers from my old Deckers box (1980's), tied so bulky that the hook gap almost doesn't exist. Finally, some #22 pheasant tails that I did not tie.  I also have some little TT pheasant tail, half-in half-out gizmos from Livingston a few months ago, made for this.  Well whaddya know!

The two flies together definitely help the leader with something to turn over. Two flies, one being a huge size 20, actually go where I want them and I'm able to make some decent pile and reach casts.  The dropper is so short, 6-9 inches, that any rise 6 inches or less from the "big" emerger is an eat nearly every time.  I rarely get an eat on the visible Sri Lanka, but it isn't spooking fish and sure makes it easy to figure out where the tiny dropper is floating.  

Mission accomplished, though I'll admit it doesn't quite feel the same as delivering one fly and watching it get chomped. After several days of mostly getting my ass kicked though, it sure feels good to bring some fish up. Made me giggle like a kid again a few times. I get some bigger fish eats and even have a hook in a few, but just can't get one to hand. The tiny hooks pull free, and a couple just take off either over or through the weeds and bye bye.  I don't think the flies will float with 5X, at least not good enough in these conditions.  7X would probably work really good, but why even bother?

In the end, I still leave defeated.  I raise only a few big fish in nearly a week, but touch none.  I fish to some nearly every day, usually to be refused or totally ignored.  On this last day, I spend the whole morning and part of the afternoon in the 80 or so feet of the big boy run above the pumphouse.  They swim, eat, and just show off right in front of me. A couple of real monsters don't rise at all, and a few nice ones sip for hours. I hook none of them, just some of their offspring.  I even tie on 8 feet of 7X near the end, still to no avail.  Maybe I'll return to see if there's more mahoganies, or an epic baetis hatch under cloudy skies.  Something to give me a chance.

I only saw a handful of tricos the first couple of mornings.

The water was noticeably lower

The tiny baetis every morning, though the hatch seem to be lighter the last couple days.

Well at least I could catch a dumb one.

Yes, I caught one with this too.

Only one cloudy morning.

A very few mahogany's in the house every morning.

The cloudy morning turned to this mid-afternoon.

Still a few of these around, but not too close.

The little side creek was really weeded over