Snake River October

by

October 2007

The plan for this trip hatched along with the hexagenias on Lake Almanor last summer. John Margaroni, Rich Holubek and I went there together and found each other's company congenial. John invited Rich and I to join him and his better half Karen for a week at the place he was renting for a couple of months on the Henrys Fork of the Snake River near St. Anthony, Idaho. A hectic summer of touch-and-go landing had me on the road to Idaho with Rich two days after returning from a month bicycling in Europe. By the afternoon of the second day of driving we were there and were fishing a few minutes from where John was staying. The Henrys Fork has a reputation for big but difficult to fool fish. There were size 22 and smaller blue winged olives coming off, which was the game the fish would have preferred to play with us. However John came up with a killer streamer--the Johnny -Be-Good, a matuka-like patttern usingg olive-dyed pine squirrel for the wing. Casting long



and stripping it lustily was good for several fish most days and one day was particularly outstanding. John had arranged a float for us with Hyde Outfitters. The South Fork was suggested and it was outstanding. Rich and I were guided by Pat Bennet, and John and Karen went with Rod Bowden. We were getting grabs from big browns on the JBG within five minutes of starting the float. My most notable fish of the day added up to 76 inches of brown trout--one twenty-incher, two nineteens and an eighteener.





It was hard to top that day and we didn't, but the JBG continued to produce fish as wading the Henry's Fork near John' s place. Particularly memorable was fishing in a snowstorm with big wet quarter-sized flakes coming down.



We caught fish, but a couple of hours of it were about all the fun we could stand, so we retreated to a warm indoors and tied some more JBG's.



One more float day was on the menu this time with another outfitter. We drifted the Box Canyon of Henrys Fork in the morning and lower down in the afternoon. It was 26 degrees when we started the float in the Box. Rich got one short-lived hookup there, otherwise we got nothing all day. John did better getting a couple of fish in the Box and a couple down below.



For our last day of fishing together, we drove over to Yellowstone Park and fished the Madison near the Barns Holes without result and did a little better on the Firehole.