In late January, on a sunny afternoon I went out on the SF at the Lorenzo bridge hoping for some midges on top and possibly some BWOs. I had been thinking about going up to the Big Lost but decided to take the 5 minute drive instead of the 95 minute drive. Apparently it was the wrong decision.
No bugs on top, no rising fish seen all day. I couldn't even dredge up a white fish on a nymph. When you can't catch a white fish on a nymph on the SF you need to rethink your hobby ;).
So in an effort to get the skunk off of me, I and Mike S took a little trip down to a local spring creek that feeds a reservoir and has a run of large rainbows in the late winter. Fish that can average 5 lbs on a good day. The big pigs weren't in. This is a water I usually catch rainbows in, and the odd cutthroat. This day I caught brown trout up to about 18 inches, rainbows up to about 13 inches, no cutts and of all the unexpected things, a yellow perch. First pan fish I have ever caught on a fly, I reckon he was a fugitive from the reservoir.
Been tying steelhead flies as steelhead are another of Idaho native species. I purchased some better materials than the craft store guinea hen hackle and watched a couple of videos, and my flies are getting better.
Next couple of weeks will see me back at the spring creek, out on the Big Lost and then up on the Salmon around Challis for steelhead.
2 comments:
Well the reservoir is about 2.5 miles downstream and there are some ponds next to the spring that may get stocked with perch, but it has to be out of one or the other.
Surprised me when I saw a 10 inch perch on the end of my line.
In doing a little more research they have stocked the ponds with perch from time to time so it must have been a refugee from the ponds.
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