Every year now for the past three years I've flown out to Spokane WA to visit a friend who lives in Idaho. Last year he was in Kellog ID, this year he had moved to Lewiston ID. Every year we do a little camping and a lot of fly fishing. This year was no different. We drove about 4 hours from Spokane to our first campground on the north fork of the Clearwater river. It's a beautiful area except for the fact that its dry as a desert out there. The river was pretty low and the wild fire risk was high. We were only allowed fires in state provided rings, which was fine.
The weather was good. 70's during the day, 40's during the night. We tented but had a fire each night so it wasn't horrible. I did wake up a few times during the night because my arm or hand snuck out of the sleeping bag and had begun to freeze but inside the bag was comfortable. I mean, as comfortable as sleeping on the ground can be.
As far as fishing goes this year was kind of an oddity. There were lots and lots of hatches, every afternoon but we saw very few fish surfacing. Maybe saw a couple dozen the whole trip. Last year (we were on a different river - the St Joe river) when there was a hatch you see a couple hundred fish surface in a 15-20 minute period. All you had to do was match the hatch and you'd get some fish. Since nothing was coming up, we didn't know what to use. We used a lot of midges and duns but they were all ignored. Eventually my friend got us on track by using a hopper (grasshopper pattern) and then it was smooth sailing. Any terrestrial pattern was eaten greedily. Hoppers, ants, water bugs, even some mayfly patterns - orange stimulators, elkhair caddis, etc.
Enough with the chatter, some pics. First of the scenery.
And on to some of the action.
A pretty special moment for me. First wild trout caught on a fly that I tied myself. A black wolly bugger.
