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well after a 2-year hiatus, the creek is back and I am off for a week and a half, leaving tomorrow late and driving all night. Been going back for 20 years or more - first on my way to Henry's Fork but when Henry's Fork took a hit we started just going to Silver Creek - a really wonderful fishery that I hope is really is on the mend.
Love the Tricos so hope they are going strong!!
Good luck and give us a report when you get back.
Jason Hartwick
Just got back from 10 days on Silver Creek and I am very excited by what I encountered!! THE CREEK IS BACK!!! Maybe not quite as good as it was a few years ago but lots of fish mostly in the 12" to 16" range with a numbr of bigger fish. The mid range fish fought the hardest with bigger fish kinda doggy. I hooked one 15-incher that got 10 yards into my backing and my cast was maybe 20 feet!!
We fished below Kilpatrick's Bridge (for those of you that know the place this is just below the Conservancy and you use tubes but not fins - it is backed up some by a dam at the lower end - lots of weeds and mud and averages maybe 2 to 4 feet deep. We started most morning around 7:30 with a few callibaetis spinners around - by around 8:30 or 9 the trico duns started up with some baetis duns - a size 22 no hackle worked the best though a hackle stacker was also deadly! Then the spinners dropped around 9:30. both flies still worked but a size 22 or 24 spinner was better - either all black (male) or cream with black thorax (female). Then the baetis spinners fell - this was tough because generally the morning breeze/wind had stopped and it was dead calm and 7x looked like cable!!! A size 24 looked a bit big but we had no size 26's. To save the day, the callibaetis started around the same time and you could go to a reasonable size 18 or 16 dun or spinner!!
Generally quit around 11:30 to 12:30 depending on how energetic we were - an adult damsel on 4 x was deadly mid day!!!
We napped or went into Sun Valley area to check out the shops - went swimming lower in the creek. One afternoon we drove up to West Yellowstone to chekc out the shops there. Early in the week we got quite a bit of rain - thunder storms and one good front.
Evenings were tough early - if we got out around 6:30 or 7 the fish were going nuts on some small mayfly - mostly nymphs - we hooked a few on emergers but were missing what the majority of fish were on. Just before dark the callibaetis spinners started hovering and then the adults started hatching - fish were on the duns for a bit until the spinners dropped then switched. Tough tying on a spinner in the dark. I generally stayed out until I could not see at all - in the faint light you could still see rings - my casts were maybe 15 feet looking up into the last of the light and could still hook fish!
My biggest fish of the trip was a 21" brown on a size 24 baetis spinner. Don had a brown close to 5#'s. But the rainbows are truly amazing fish on this creek with long sizzling runs!! We generally were using 2 and 3 wts.
I will try to post a picture later that Don took of callibaetis duns in the truck lights on the bumper. They were literally hundreds of bugs piled on top of each other - you could brush off big piles of them and it would immediately fill up again!! A truly great trip!!
Will give this another try - couple of photos of callibaetis from Silver Creek
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...J/charlie3.jpgl
Callibaetis swarm around truck lights
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3.../charlies1.jpg
Callibaetis on truck bumper (lots more than this on a zoom out)
WOW :!:
Can you even call that a hatch....it looks more like a swarm to me.
That's a crazy amount of Callibaetis mayflies.
Very cool Rick.
P.S. If you give your photo captions a space below the picture link when typing your post you better can read the captions. You can always go back and edit one of your own posts by clicking the "edit" button at the top of the message window.