I spent a couple of hours exploring Valley Creek last week with a small 7′ 0″ 4 wt rod. Valley Creek holds a lot of smaller brook trout, cutthroats, stocked rainbows, whitefish, and salmon smolts. The brookies were happy to take a #14 Royal Wulff. Whitefish and rainbows went crazy for small nymphs, and I picked up several on #16 pheasant tail nymphs. Here are a few photos from my afternoon.
Valley Creek – Perfect for a small bamboo rod.
A nice brookie that took a Royal Wulff.
Hatchery Rainbow
I got out my 10′ 6″ 5 wt Bamboo Switch Rod today and tried swinging some large wooley buggers through some of the heavy, deeper water downstream from town a ways. We’ve had some unusually hot weather for the past several days so I was thinking some of the larger cutthroats might have moved into the faster moving, more oxygenated water. I chose a weighted #4 Black Wooley Bugger with a gold cone-head. This proved to be a good choice and I was able to pick up a few nice cutties. Here is a sample of my day.
A #4 Black Wooley Bugger
A nice 16″ Cutthroat that couldn’t resist my wooley bugger on the swing.
Mary Ann was on the river guiding today so I went out on my own. I hit a favorite spot on the Salmon River, and had the hardest time finding any fish willing to look up for dry flies. The water looked good, and there were olive stoneflies, caddis, and golden stoneflies out on the water. But, I only managed a entice couple of 10″ rainbows to my dry flies. Whitefish were very happy to take nymphs, and I picked up 12 or 14 on stonefly nymphs and prince nymphs. After 4 hours of fishing I was just about to call it a day. But, instead, I worked upstream to deeper water, still trying the same dry flies that I had been trying earlier in the day. Surprisingly, from 3:00 PM to 3:45 PM when It was 98 degrees, I picked up 6 nice cutthroats on a #12 olive bodied Elk Hair Caddis and a #8 Yellow Crystal Stimulator. I’m not sure why I had this success late in the day, but I was certainly happy to finally find some cooperative Cutties! Here are a couple of photos for my day:
Slower, deeper water upstream by the rocks.
A nice cutthroat that took a yellow crystal stimulator.
I hit my favorite small creek here in Central Idaho yesterday, Bear Valley Creek, to see if the fish would cooperate. It was a blustery day with high clouds and just a little sun. The bugs didn’t seem to like the wind, and I didn’t see a single fish rise all day. I saw a few Blue Winged Olives and Yellow Sallies flying around so I went surface with representative nymphs. In between the 12 or 14 whitefish I caught, I managed to pick up a few nice 15″ cutthroats. Here are a few photos from my day:
Bear Valley Creek, Idaho
A #14 Tungsten Yellow Sally Nymph and a #18 Psycho Mayfly Nymph.
A beautiful Bear Valley Creek Cutthroat
I was playing around with a few underwater fish pictures with my waterproof Olympus camera the other day. Usually when I try it, they don’t turn out very well. But, here are two that worked out quite nicely. I’m sure the clear water in Bear Valley Creek helped. Both cutthroats were about 15″ long, and took small nymphs drifted through shallow riffles.
A nice release of a native cutthroat.
Another nice cutthroat.