Stonefly Madness on the South Fork of the Snake

Well I think I may be mostly recovered from a combination of a two and a half day fishing trip on the other side of the state followed up with a nice little flu bug.  Talk about wiping a guy out.  The trip was a great one though.  One of the better years for us hitting the Stonefly hatch.

Night number one was spent at one of the upper canyon campgrounds.  We pulled in at dusk and set up our tent in the dark.  The two hour float down to the campground yielded nothing in terms of fish.  I was wondering just how the next day was going to end up.  After sleeping lightly due to high anticipation and lumpy ground we were back on the river at 7:00 the next morning.  As I climbed into the boat that morning I noticed both the boat and the grass along the rivers bank were covered with many smaller Yellow Sally Stonefly's.  There were also quite a few larger Golden Stones crawling around and it didn't take long on our float to notice a couple bugs the size of a small bird fluttering on the water.  The Giant Salmonflies were out as well.  We went straight to the Stonefly patterns starting out with a moderately sized #8 Stimulator.  Sure enough the fish were eating it up.

After lunch I switched over to a small PMD pattern for a while as there was a tremendous hatch of the mayflies as well and I picked up several nice fish on the smaller bugs.  Finally we pulled out of the river at 7:00 that night, loaded up the boat and headed back up river to put in to float the couple hours back down to the camp we had left set up from the night before.  Again that upper stretch yielded nothing.  Very odd.

The next day I was hoping to get another early start so we wouldn't get off the river too late for the 5 1/2 hour drive home.  I slept much better though being worn out from the previous day and I woke up with a start at 8:30.  We finally were back on the river at 9, a full 2 hours behind our day one schedule which put us at the take out at 7pm.  I was hoping this late start didn't mean we would be arriving at the take out that day at 9pm.  It turns out we were able to make better time on this day and still manage a few fish in the process.

The fishing wasn't quite as hot as we landed a couple fewer fish on the day but things were still happening on the river.  We made it to the take out again at 7pm and cleaned up the boat for the drive home.  We were on the road by 8 and made excellent time on the drive.  All in all it was another tremendous trip down the South Fork of the Snake.  I hope we are able to get back up there this fall for some streamer fishing for the big browns.