The word in the shop is that the Big Wood gets too badly de-watered below Bellevue. I'm not sure how much worse it can get. I fished past one irrigation diversion that literally took half the water. The best fishing was below that. Upstream there are 18 miles before you get to Ketchum, and more miles above there, most of it more rural and inaccessible than what I fished.
There might be a pattern here. Get cleaned on Silver Creek in the morning, and re-charge on the Big Wood afternoons. I'm especially impressed with all the big hoppers I kept kicking up along the bank, though I'm not sure anything else could have possibly worked better than the # 12 Adams did today.
Day 3 - Start in on Silver Creek in the float tube water below Kilpatrick Bridge. I did learn that the water above the bridge is open to float tubes as well, as it has always been. The regulation as posted at the Conservancy headquarters just reads literally that it is closed. They allow that maybe it is confusing. Hmmm. The hatch is not nearly so heavy here as it was upstream yesterday, barely enough to get the fish feeding regularly, if not incautiously. It's definitely a multiple hatch, with a small Baetis-sized dun, and a larger brown dun, about size 14. So far as I can tell, the fish seem to be taking both, but very irregularly. It is rare to find a fish that isn't letting many naturals go by before finally taking one. It makes for very TOUGH fishing. I finally give up on the no hackle dun from the shop and go back to my own deerhair pattern. I get a good number of solid, aggressive takes but nothing sticks. I'm convinced that
either these fish know how to take a fly and get rid of it quickly in case it sets back, or a fly with a stiff wing parallel to the hook point turns flat as the fish closes it's mouth, and then rarely catches. The wind comes up with a vengeance, causing mini-whitecaps in the channel. Even so, I see a few rises in the
heavy riffle, and get two good, solid takes from big fish. One pops free immediately and the other breaks me off. I finish witha pair of gulpers in a lee of flat water that are cruising back and forth vacuuming the surface. I take one 12 incher and touch the bigger one momentarily.
In the afternoon I am back on the Big Wood. My intention was to fish the water between Bellevue and Hailey, above the irrigation diversion were there would be more water, but this is saturday and there were five cars at the access point. With three fishermen starting upstream ahead of me I quit immediately and go back downstream, starting where I left off the day before. I have all afternoon, so I cover miles of river, fishing probably 10 or 12 holes in all. The water is so low that it really is a long hike between fishable water. Don't do as well as yesterday, probably catch 12 fish in all, two about 14-15 inches. I come back
