Every year when the calendar turns to August I begin thinking about school resuming and the fact that I'll soon have to go back to work. While I never truly feel ready to resume working 55 hour weeks after 2 months of not working, I've found some ways to feel refreshed and recharged. Namely, in the last four years I've begun prioritizing recreational trips in mid-August to send summer out with a bang. Four years ago it was a couple of short backpacking trips to the Alpine Lake Wilderness; three years ago I backpacked the Wonderland Trail; two years ago I spent 4 days at a USFS campground on a great cutthroat river; last year, life events prevented anything of the sort. This year I was determined to get another trip in, and to dial in the type of trip that I prefer. A backpacking only trip wasn't the ticket, I don't love the process of setting up and breaking down camp daily, but I do enjoy the remoteness, Wilderness, and adventure that it provides. Purely car camping and fishing wasn't the ticket, I wanted a bit more solitude.
A plan was hatched over the winter: go back to the cutthroat river, car camp and fish in relative comfort, but also backpack in to a remote section of river for a couple of nights with my best friend.
Day 1 (Tuesday 8/13):
We set alarms for 4 am, had breakfast and coffee, and were on the road by 4:45. We made the long drive to the USFS campground at the end of the road, stopping once for gas and once more at a fly shop on our destination river for some flies, floatant, banter, and intel. By about 2:00 we arrived at the campground and found it nearly empty. We quickly set up camp, my buddy in his tent, me in the hammock, and made sandwiches for lunch. Unfortunately the hand pump was out of order so there was no potable water at camp. While we had our Sawyer squeeze systems and could filter river water, that didn't sound like fun so we backtracked on the road a few miles to get water and decided to fish that area along the road for the afternoon/evening. I think this section gets relatively high fishing pressure, but we were still able to chase some fish up. I like to carry two rods: an 8 foot 3 weight to throw dries and a 9 foot 5 weight with a double nymph rig. I fish dries first until a hole/run/pocket is exhausted, then switch rods and try to nymph up missed fish. My buddy did similarly, but he likes to throw streamers on a trout spey instead of nymphs. We each picked up about a dozen fish on the day ranging from 6-16". My largest was 13", his 16 incher came on a swung black bunny leech. I even picked up a few whiteys in the 10-12" range.
As dusk settled in, we headed back to camp and came across a moose cow in a meadow in the far side of the river.
Once back in camp we had a satisfying steak, mashed potato, and asparagus dinner washed down with a couple of brews before turning in for the night.
Day 2:
Alarms rang at 6:00 so we could get up, eat, and drink coffee while breaking down camp and getting our packs loaded up.
By 7:30 we were on the road, we had an hour of driving gravel roads to get to our chosen trailhead many miles upriver from there. The section of river between the trailhead and our previous night's camp is only accessible by hiking or stock and held the promise of relatively unpressured water and solitude. I'd never visited this part of the river before, but spent many hours poring over topo maps, Google satellite images, and setting waypoints for potential camping and fishing spots. We headed off down the trail through beautiful country, salivating over all the choice pools visible from the trail, which mostly stayed 50+ feet above the river.
Every so often the trail dropped down to the level of the river and after a handful of miles we came across this idyllic camp next to a braided section of river.
We tossed our packs and set up camp and set out to explore the water around camp. Up this high, the river isn't very large, averaging about 40 feet in width in the straight riffles and 25 feet where it tightens up for runs and pools at river bends. The braids of camp water were only 8-15 feet wide, mostly shallow, but with some good pocket pools. This run alongside camp was especially nice.
The fishing was good, but not exactly what I expected. The cutthroat were raising pretty routinely and every dry we threw worked a little bit, but nothing was lighting it up. There weren't many insects flying around; a small tan caddis here or there, some midges, some smallish mayflies, and some small dark olive stoneflies. Yellow sallies were by far the most numerous, but I still only saw 1 every 10-15 minutes and there wasn't anything visible that the fish were taking, maybe they were on small stuff, maybe they were taking emergers. The nymph rig with a size 10 Pat's rubber legs up top and a size 14 jighead soft hackle pheasant tail below was working well though. I love watching cuties crush dries with abandon so after lots of fly changes, I finally found something that worked consistently. I went through a few different hoppers since we saw many hiking in, I tried tan, yellow, and orange EHC which worked especially well on this river 2 years prior, purple haze, and a couple of "hot flies" from the shop way down river. Finally digging into the recesses of my box, I tied on a size 12 Lochsa Special that I tied 6-7 years ago and it was game on for a dozen fish before donating it to the logjam seen below. A really nice cutt came out from under the 2nd log downstream to take the Lochsa Special just in front of the first log, but then bolted for the depths and wrapped me around a submerged branch and broke the tippet.
Well crap, that was the only one I had in my box. OK, what else did I have in olive of about that size? A size 14 olive chubby! That turned out the be by far the best dry fly of the trip, but I only had 2 of them in my box. My buddy didn't have any, but had a few olive EHC which also worked great. It seemed that anything olive and floating in size 10-16, regardless of profile was the preferred menu item. Unfortunately, It was late by the time that I figured it out, so I'd have to wait until the next day to really get after it.
We fished the entire braided section plus the run/pool above and below the braids, maybe 3/4 of a river mile in total before returning to camp. The canyon walls are fairly steep and night sets in quick so we knocked off at about 7:30, but I couldn't resist the urge to fish the camp water one last time. I was glad I did, the jighead PT landed me a beautiful, fat 15" westslope. There is something thrilling about catching fish the measure longer in inches than the water does wide in feet. Unfortunately no picture because I'd already dropped my sling pack in camp.
Day 3:
After a wonderful night sleeping to the soundtrack of a babbling river, we got up and worked out the day's plan: hike 1.5 miles downstream to an especially winding section of river that the trail drops down to and fish our way back to camp.
The olive chubby worked out of the gate. From 9:00 until our streamside lunch of crackers, summer sausage, and dried fruit at 1:30, that single fly must have landed 20+ fish and missed/lost a similar number. The nymph rig picked up another dozen, but I didn't fish it as much since the dry was working so well. Many of the fish were small, but so gorgeous. This specimen was striking with its spots and parr marks.
Shortly after lunch, consistent thunder showers rolled in, but thankfully stayed on the ridge tops all day and left the river bottom dry save for one 15 minute stretch of bright sun and the largest raindrops I've ever seen. This single splatter was 4" in diameter.
After a few more fish the chubby was toast.
I spun my sling pack around to find that I had forgotten to zip up the front pocket...and my main fly box was no longer in the pocket. The double sided box had ~50 dries on one side and another ~50 nymphs on the other, including all of my confidence flies and all of the flies that had been working the best. I walked down river to the last 3 spots I fished and spent 45 minutes searching for the box to no avail. Donating that box to the river was a gut punch. All that remained were 2 pucks with the recently purchased dry flies and a handful of parachutes and 1 small box with some streamers, and whatever was stuck in the foam patch on my slick pack.
I fished various dries for the rest of the day, each working so-so. The nymph rig was still going strong so I fished that a bit more until losing both flies to an unseen submerged branch. At that point I didn't have a lot of options so on went a streamer @mcswny sent me a couple of years ago. Being mostly pocket water, there aren't many places to swing a streamer, but we found a couple of longer runs that looked good. We alternate who gets to fish the prime lies as we move along the river and this run was my turn. First cast and the streamer was slammed just as the fly swung through the midpoint of the run and resulted in my best fish of the trip, a THICK 16" cutt.
-
He chose not to hang around long enough for a hero shot.
We made our way back to camp, pretty beat from a full day of hiking and wet wading the river, took a river bath (water temp was 57-61 up here), made backpacking meal dinners to eat next to the fire and turned in about 9. I woke up to pee around midnight and strolled up the trail to a scree field and marveled at the number and brightness of stars in the night sky until I got too chilly and need the warmth of my down quilt.
Day 4:
We got up about 8:00, ate, packed up and hiked out. Once back at the truck a celebratory Gatorade and beer were had before driving back to the USFS campground. Stunningly, the same campsite was open so we created a facsimile of our setups from a few nights before. Then we hiked 1.5 miles up the trail from the campground to fish our way back down. The river here is 2-3 times the size of where we were that morning, with much more pronounced runs and pools and significantly more fish in the larger class size.
Again, the fish were rising and all the dries I had only worked so-so and the streamers weren't working at all for me. My buddy was doing much better, but I had a TOUGH day. I missed the first 10ish strikes of the day, had countless refusals, and lost many hooked fish. I ended the day with a dozen to hand, but the largest was 11". At one point I tied on a tan CDC EHC and a small olive hare's ear dropped to fish a long run. First cast, a huge trout crushed the EHC and I fought it for 15 second before it came unbuttoned. That started a streak of 8 fish estimated 14" or better that I hooked and could not land. 5 minutes after that fish and 20 feet down the run, something took the dropper and I hooked it solidly. It was taking me to task on the 3 weight; easily the largest fish I'd tussled with on the trip. It popped off and disappeared to the depths. I took a look at my fly, the hare's ear broke off at the hook bend, leaving the point stuck in the fish's mouth. Damn, I would've liked to land that, but there were probably some rust issues with that old, used fly. We finished off the day at dusk then had some beer and Frito pie and whoppers.
Day 5:
We originally planned to pack everything except our rods and wading boots and spot hop downriver on our drive home, but after we got up, we both agreed that our bodies were tired and we were plenty satisfied with the amount of fishing and fish caught and were ready to head home. We pulled out of camp about 8:30, stopped in Spokane for some amazing tacos at lunch and made it home by early evening.
Outside of the fishing, camping, hiking, and camaraderie, the scenery was wonderful. Many of the wildflowers were done for the year, but we found some meadows and stream-side pockets that still held vibrant colors. While I don't have the knowledge, skill, or artistry of @Cabezon, I also love the flowers and butterflies to be found in these mountains.
We had an absolutely amazing time. So much so that we've planned to return in mid-August next year and backpack into a different stretch of the hike-in only section. Reflecting today, I feel ready to undertake another year of working the middle school shenanigans out of 100+ 14 year olds.
A plan was hatched over the winter: go back to the cutthroat river, car camp and fish in relative comfort, but also backpack in to a remote section of river for a couple of nights with my best friend.
Day 1 (Tuesday 8/13):
We set alarms for 4 am, had breakfast and coffee, and were on the road by 4:45. We made the long drive to the USFS campground at the end of the road, stopping once for gas and once more at a fly shop on our destination river for some flies, floatant, banter, and intel. By about 2:00 we arrived at the campground and found it nearly empty. We quickly set up camp, my buddy in his tent, me in the hammock, and made sandwiches for lunch. Unfortunately the hand pump was out of order so there was no potable water at camp. While we had our Sawyer squeeze systems and could filter river water, that didn't sound like fun so we backtracked on the road a few miles to get water and decided to fish that area along the road for the afternoon/evening. I think this section gets relatively high fishing pressure, but we were still able to chase some fish up. I like to carry two rods: an 8 foot 3 weight to throw dries and a 9 foot 5 weight with a double nymph rig. I fish dries first until a hole/run/pocket is exhausted, then switch rods and try to nymph up missed fish. My buddy did similarly, but he likes to throw streamers on a trout spey instead of nymphs. We each picked up about a dozen fish on the day ranging from 6-16". My largest was 13", his 16 incher came on a swung black bunny leech. I even picked up a few whiteys in the 10-12" range.
As dusk settled in, we headed back to camp and came across a moose cow in a meadow in the far side of the river.
Once back in camp we had a satisfying steak, mashed potato, and asparagus dinner washed down with a couple of brews before turning in for the night.
Day 2:
Alarms rang at 6:00 so we could get up, eat, and drink coffee while breaking down camp and getting our packs loaded up.
By 7:30 we were on the road, we had an hour of driving gravel roads to get to our chosen trailhead many miles upriver from there. The section of river between the trailhead and our previous night's camp is only accessible by hiking or stock and held the promise of relatively unpressured water and solitude. I'd never visited this part of the river before, but spent many hours poring over topo maps, Google satellite images, and setting waypoints for potential camping and fishing spots. We headed off down the trail through beautiful country, salivating over all the choice pools visible from the trail, which mostly stayed 50+ feet above the river.
Every so often the trail dropped down to the level of the river and after a handful of miles we came across this idyllic camp next to a braided section of river.
We tossed our packs and set up camp and set out to explore the water around camp. Up this high, the river isn't very large, averaging about 40 feet in width in the straight riffles and 25 feet where it tightens up for runs and pools at river bends. The braids of camp water were only 8-15 feet wide, mostly shallow, but with some good pocket pools. This run alongside camp was especially nice.
The fishing was good, but not exactly what I expected. The cutthroat were raising pretty routinely and every dry we threw worked a little bit, but nothing was lighting it up. There weren't many insects flying around; a small tan caddis here or there, some midges, some smallish mayflies, and some small dark olive stoneflies. Yellow sallies were by far the most numerous, but I still only saw 1 every 10-15 minutes and there wasn't anything visible that the fish were taking, maybe they were on small stuff, maybe they were taking emergers. The nymph rig with a size 10 Pat's rubber legs up top and a size 14 jighead soft hackle pheasant tail below was working well though. I love watching cuties crush dries with abandon so after lots of fly changes, I finally found something that worked consistently. I went through a few different hoppers since we saw many hiking in, I tried tan, yellow, and orange EHC which worked especially well on this river 2 years prior, purple haze, and a couple of "hot flies" from the shop way down river. Finally digging into the recesses of my box, I tied on a size 12 Lochsa Special that I tied 6-7 years ago and it was game on for a dozen fish before donating it to the logjam seen below. A really nice cutt came out from under the 2nd log downstream to take the Lochsa Special just in front of the first log, but then bolted for the depths and wrapped me around a submerged branch and broke the tippet.
Well crap, that was the only one I had in my box. OK, what else did I have in olive of about that size? A size 14 olive chubby! That turned out the be by far the best dry fly of the trip, but I only had 2 of them in my box. My buddy didn't have any, but had a few olive EHC which also worked great. It seemed that anything olive and floating in size 10-16, regardless of profile was the preferred menu item. Unfortunately, It was late by the time that I figured it out, so I'd have to wait until the next day to really get after it.
We fished the entire braided section plus the run/pool above and below the braids, maybe 3/4 of a river mile in total before returning to camp. The canyon walls are fairly steep and night sets in quick so we knocked off at about 7:30, but I couldn't resist the urge to fish the camp water one last time. I was glad I did, the jighead PT landed me a beautiful, fat 15" westslope. There is something thrilling about catching fish the measure longer in inches than the water does wide in feet. Unfortunately no picture because I'd already dropped my sling pack in camp.
Day 3:
After a wonderful night sleeping to the soundtrack of a babbling river, we got up and worked out the day's plan: hike 1.5 miles downstream to an especially winding section of river that the trail drops down to and fish our way back to camp.
The olive chubby worked out of the gate. From 9:00 until our streamside lunch of crackers, summer sausage, and dried fruit at 1:30, that single fly must have landed 20+ fish and missed/lost a similar number. The nymph rig picked up another dozen, but I didn't fish it as much since the dry was working so well. Many of the fish were small, but so gorgeous. This specimen was striking with its spots and parr marks.
Shortly after lunch, consistent thunder showers rolled in, but thankfully stayed on the ridge tops all day and left the river bottom dry save for one 15 minute stretch of bright sun and the largest raindrops I've ever seen. This single splatter was 4" in diameter.
After a few more fish the chubby was toast.
I spun my sling pack around to find that I had forgotten to zip up the front pocket...and my main fly box was no longer in the pocket. The double sided box had ~50 dries on one side and another ~50 nymphs on the other, including all of my confidence flies and all of the flies that had been working the best. I walked down river to the last 3 spots I fished and spent 45 minutes searching for the box to no avail. Donating that box to the river was a gut punch. All that remained were 2 pucks with the recently purchased dry flies and a handful of parachutes and 1 small box with some streamers, and whatever was stuck in the foam patch on my slick pack.
I fished various dries for the rest of the day, each working so-so. The nymph rig was still going strong so I fished that a bit more until losing both flies to an unseen submerged branch. At that point I didn't have a lot of options so on went a streamer @mcswny sent me a couple of years ago. Being mostly pocket water, there aren't many places to swing a streamer, but we found a couple of longer runs that looked good. We alternate who gets to fish the prime lies as we move along the river and this run was my turn. First cast and the streamer was slammed just as the fly swung through the midpoint of the run and resulted in my best fish of the trip, a THICK 16" cutt.
-
He chose not to hang around long enough for a hero shot.
We made our way back to camp, pretty beat from a full day of hiking and wet wading the river, took a river bath (water temp was 57-61 up here), made backpacking meal dinners to eat next to the fire and turned in about 9. I woke up to pee around midnight and strolled up the trail to a scree field and marveled at the number and brightness of stars in the night sky until I got too chilly and need the warmth of my down quilt.
Day 4:
We got up about 8:00, ate, packed up and hiked out. Once back at the truck a celebratory Gatorade and beer were had before driving back to the USFS campground. Stunningly, the same campsite was open so we created a facsimile of our setups from a few nights before. Then we hiked 1.5 miles up the trail from the campground to fish our way back down. The river here is 2-3 times the size of where we were that morning, with much more pronounced runs and pools and significantly more fish in the larger class size.
Again, the fish were rising and all the dries I had only worked so-so and the streamers weren't working at all for me. My buddy was doing much better, but I had a TOUGH day. I missed the first 10ish strikes of the day, had countless refusals, and lost many hooked fish. I ended the day with a dozen to hand, but the largest was 11". At one point I tied on a tan CDC EHC and a small olive hare's ear dropped to fish a long run. First cast, a huge trout crushed the EHC and I fought it for 15 second before it came unbuttoned. That started a streak of 8 fish estimated 14" or better that I hooked and could not land. 5 minutes after that fish and 20 feet down the run, something took the dropper and I hooked it solidly. It was taking me to task on the 3 weight; easily the largest fish I'd tussled with on the trip. It popped off and disappeared to the depths. I took a look at my fly, the hare's ear broke off at the hook bend, leaving the point stuck in the fish's mouth. Damn, I would've liked to land that, but there were probably some rust issues with that old, used fly. We finished off the day at dusk then had some beer and Frito pie and whoppers.
Day 5:
We originally planned to pack everything except our rods and wading boots and spot hop downriver on our drive home, but after we got up, we both agreed that our bodies were tired and we were plenty satisfied with the amount of fishing and fish caught and were ready to head home. We pulled out of camp about 8:30, stopped in Spokane for some amazing tacos at lunch and made it home by early evening.
Outside of the fishing, camping, hiking, and camaraderie, the scenery was wonderful. Many of the wildflowers were done for the year, but we found some meadows and stream-side pockets that still held vibrant colors. While I don't have the knowledge, skill, or artistry of @Cabezon, I also love the flowers and butterflies to be found in these mountains.
We had an absolutely amazing time. So much so that we've planned to return in mid-August next year and backpack into a different stretch of the hike-in only section. Reflecting today, I feel ready to undertake another year of working the middle school shenanigans out of 100+ 14 year olds.
