SF Upper

I had to give the South Fork upper stretch one more go before the weather turns over in Swan Valley for awhile.  I planned to fish with my buddy Owen Jones and while making some breakfast, Scott Smith buzzes in trying to fish with us too.  It worked out perfectly and being that we now had a full boat crew, we made tracks toward Palisades dam.

The weather was great in the morning with the sun just starting to peek through and the temperature approaching upper 40's.  Streamer fishing was productive early with buggers and hairy, leechy looking flies and 

the Baetis hatch in the afternoon also produced some nice fish.  

I haven't had a chance to fish with my boy, Owen much this summer, so it was gonna be a good day anyway just fishing with friends; little did I know ol OJ was planning on freakin 'em all the way to the boat ramp.  Juice box got this bruiser Cutty in a riffle on an olive streamer and it turned out to be one of the bigger Cutthroat he's ever caught!  Congrats Owen on your hoss, nice work! 

OJ, freakin' em.

Also, Juice deserves accolades for maintaining composure with a big fish, even with two guides with cameras yelling at him the whole time...

Fishing Alcova

Recently headed down to Alcova to camp and fish with my friends Neil and his Dad, Greg, and Bill Durdel.  Fishing was decent the first day, but with gusts up to 45mph, we couldn't help but take a step back and just throw in the towel in the afternoon; which really only meant we hung out, shot guns and sipped bourbon....into the night.

The next day's forecast looked much more promising and the fishing turned out to be great as well.  Cloudy morning, low breeze and hungry fish made for a great day and although we never landed the boss we were looking for, we crushed it.  Streamer fishing was absurd.

Snowy Snake

Just enlarge this.

Called up my buddy Dave Smith the other morning to try and fit in an afternoon of fishing below Jackson Lake Dam.  Fishing was not quite as good as last time but it was still a great afternoon and with the Snake leveled off at something like 200 CFS out of the dam, the river is stable and totally set at winter flows.  Streamers are still great but the big fish weren't quite as aggressive this time.


Speaking of winter.....it snowed, and snowed, and snowed, while we did our own bike shuttle.



















Speaking of dinner......