09-05-2010, 08:45 PM
I just got back from a fun filled couple of days at our cabin in Island Park and let me tell you, the rivers and streams are rocking right now. I fished the whole time with my new Sage 4 weight and had a riot.
The first evening I was there, my brother-in-law and I fished between Coffee Pot rapids and Mack's Inn. For the first few hours there was a real nice hatch going on in which a #16 BWO got strike after strike. The rainbows and the brookies weren't huge (7-9") but they were fighters. We probably hooked 20 a peice. The hatch started to slow down around 7:45 so I switched flies, knowing the Kokanee were in the area spawning. I tied on a black woolly bugger with an egg head and cast upstream and stripped it in. 9 casts. No hits. Suddenly, the fly get taken hard. I knew I had a huge fish on! I fought it for a good 10-15 minutes before my brother-in-law helped me net it. It was a 22 inch brown that weighed 5.5 pounds. (It's now being soaked in milk in preparation for a feast) I had never heard of browns being in the part of the river and was quite taken by surprise.
The next day, we hit a small river in the area. Idealic! Though the fish weren't huge, we caught mostly brookies with an occasional rainbow. The biggest brookies were about 9". We honestly couldn't keep them off of our flies for the first three hours until things heated up a bit and all of the family reunion floaters drifted by. We probably landed 30 brookies a piece and put them all back. It was too much fun. Renegades, wulffs, royal humpies. All good.
Later we went back out to Henry's Fork where we had been the night before and had some more fun with the bows and brookies on some small BWOs.
With the smaller numbers of people up there in the weeks to come, I can only imagine Island Park will be funner and funner to fish.
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The first evening I was there, my brother-in-law and I fished between Coffee Pot rapids and Mack's Inn. For the first few hours there was a real nice hatch going on in which a #16 BWO got strike after strike. The rainbows and the brookies weren't huge (7-9") but they were fighters. We probably hooked 20 a peice. The hatch started to slow down around 7:45 so I switched flies, knowing the Kokanee were in the area spawning. I tied on a black woolly bugger with an egg head and cast upstream and stripped it in. 9 casts. No hits. Suddenly, the fly get taken hard. I knew I had a huge fish on! I fought it for a good 10-15 minutes before my brother-in-law helped me net it. It was a 22 inch brown that weighed 5.5 pounds. (It's now being soaked in milk in preparation for a feast) I had never heard of browns being in the part of the river and was quite taken by surprise.
The next day, we hit a small river in the area. Idealic! Though the fish weren't huge, we caught mostly brookies with an occasional rainbow. The biggest brookies were about 9". We honestly couldn't keep them off of our flies for the first three hours until things heated up a bit and all of the family reunion floaters drifted by. We probably landed 30 brookies a piece and put them all back. It was too much fun. Renegades, wulffs, royal humpies. All good.
Later we went back out to Henry's Fork where we had been the night before and had some more fun with the bows and brookies on some small BWOs.
With the smaller numbers of people up there in the weeks to come, I can only imagine Island Park will be funner and funner to fish.
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