Amazing Idaho Back Country Trip

[CutThroat Leaders]

We finally got home late last night. I was lucky enough to have spent a few days in one of my favorite places on earth. A small creek (tributary of the middle fork of the salmon) in the center of the Frank Church Wilderness of River of No Return. I am happy to say that we saw more wild Salmon on this trip than any previous trip on the same creek. We witness many salmon paired up with a mate, many fighting to make it upstream, and some even belly crawling their way down low water gravel bars to deeper pools. Nothing gets the heart pumping of a fly fisherman more than seeing massive salmon migrating upstream between your legs while casting to fat cutthroat trout. Between the amazing scenery, the spectacular cutthroat fishing, or the great company of a good friend, this trip had it all. We caught and released many cutthroats, some rainbows and even a few Bull trout.
While casting to a group of large cuttys’, I actually had a salmon rise to my dry fly, thank goodness he spit it out as I was fishing a 4wt bamboo rod… We actually witnessed the salmon rising to naturals on many occasions. This surprised us very much. I do not have vast experience fishing for salmon, but I was surprised to see them rise as often as they did. We watched one very large salmon, rise rhythmically to a small sporadic hatch. It almost seemed the fish was rising more for some instinctual reason than for the consumption of insects. I plan to contact fish and game to get their take on this interesting behavior.
I have included a few images of trip. I hope to post more once I get the time to go through all of them. We took many…
Thanks for looking.

 

[okbow68]

Wow what a great that trip would be!

 

[stenacron]

Thanks for sharing Mike. Sounds that trip did have it all.

I've got to get my backpacking gear together again... reports like this keep me motivated to do so. :thumbsup:

 

[mirabelasunshine]

Cool! I won't ask which creek you were on, but on a trip in the same area in the summer of 2001 I had pretty much the best fishing of my life. For a straight week we had a hookup on better than half the casts we made, the average fish were 12 - 14", and about three times a day I'd get something that would have been the best fish of my year here in VT. I accidentally connected with two salmon on that trip, too -- landed a 33" king on a 6 pound tippet -- and I was very impressed with how fresh and strong the salmon there were looking after 600 miles of swimming and 4500' of elevation gain from salt water.

What a place. I'd love to go back.

 

[fq13]

I've fished the Salmon out of Stanley and it was amazing. The Sawtooth mountains, great trout, and incredible scenery. Cold as hell, even in late summer, but I loved it.
Sounds like you had a great trip.

 

[mcnerney]

Mike: Thanks for sharing the trip report and awesome photos, that bull trout was fantastic!

Larry

 

[Hombre06]

What a great trip. Thanks for the pictures.

 

[CutThroat Leaders]

Because a fishing trip includes so much more than just fish. I have added some landscape pics to this thread. Thanks for looking.