Day 3: South Fork of the Snake

Day three began at 5:30am.  We got ready, threw the gear in the car and we were out of the room by 6:30am.  We had at least a half hour drive, but we weren't sure how traffic would be going through the Teton Pass on our way to Victer Idaho where we were scheduled to meet our fishing guide at the Worldcast Anglers fly shop.  We drove around looking for some breakfast and coffee in Jackson.  Nothing was open but the gas station accross from our hotel.  Breakfast was gas station coffee and a stale blueberry muffin.  The it was off to the West towards Victer.  The Teton Pass is a steep, two lane, mountain pass with several switchbacks on the way up and then again on the way down.  I was enamered with the view as the sun was rising and kept saying "look at that", "wow, look over there."  My wife hates these kind of roads and kept telling me to keep my eyes on the road.  As we were driving down, the grade was so steep, the brakes were shaking the car.  We thought there might have been something wrong with the car.  When we spoke to the rental car agency, we were told it was caused by the brakes over heating and we were instructed to downshift to slow the car down in those kinds of situations to prevent the brakes form over heating, which did the trick.  Victer is a small town with one main intersection.  When we arrived everything was closed, even the fly shop.  We drove around a bit to see what was off the main road and then headed back to the shop to meet our guide.  We arrived at about 7:15 to buy our fioshing licenses and get some leaders and other items we would need for the trip.

     
By 7:30am, Mike, our guide for the day, had arrived and was getting flies we'd need and loading our gear into his truck for the trip south from Victer to the South Fork of the Snake where we were going to float throught the canyon section of the river.

After a beutiful drive through the Targhee National Forest, we arrived at the boat launch.  I had expected an imporved concrete boat ramp.  We launched the boat from a small clearing in the bankside brush just large enough for the boat trailer to fit.  The ramp itself was no ramp at all, the bank had been worn away into a rough ramp by all the previous boats that had been launched here.  While Mike readied the boat, I rigged the rods.  A six weight with a large foam dry fly called a water walker; a five weight with an x-caddis and dry pmd dropper; and a five weight with a double nymph rig.



Mike had me began fishing the big foam dry fly as soon as we launched and we quickly had the first fish in the boat.  As we worked our way down stream, there was a big brown that came up to look at the foam fly, but refused to take.  We stopped and gout out to see if we could convince the big brown to eat the smaller caddis or pmd.  After several casts it became apparent we had put him down and we moved on.  Mike had my wife fish the nymph rig with a large golden stonefly nymph and a mayfly nymph dropper that was much smaller.  She quickly had her first fish on, a feisty rainbow.  I was thrilled that she had boated a fish so quickly, I felt it was going to be a great day for both of us.

 
I continued to catch fish.  I caught rainbows, browns, cutbows, cutthroat and mountain whitefish.  I must have caught over 40 fish by days end.  My wife topped off the day with a monster brown trout.  This was defenately the fish of the day.  This is the second time she has outfished me.  The fish on the South Fork are numerous, the average fish is 16" and some are huge. The fish will eat big dry flies.  This is an awesome river that I will surely return to fish again.

 

After the float trip on the South Fork we headed back to Wyoming to get dinner.  We went back to Teton Village and took the gondola to a montain top resteraunt called Couloir.  It was a very fancy and elegant four course meal with a spectacular view of the the Snake River Valley.