North Platte River, Wyoming trip

The best news of the trip is that our younger daughter’s wedding went fantastically. The weather was amazing that day, and the ceremony was in Casper, on top of Casper Mountain. The reception on top of the mountain was epic.

A good friend of mine and I travelled out to Casper a week early to “insure everything was going according to plan” with the wedding. Being typical men, we were not much help in this area. That took about an hour and a half to approve of everything, and left time for 5 and a half days of fishing on the North Platte.

I have never fished this water, and after reading about it, we were very much looking forward to fishing it. We had 4 days of drifts lined up along with a day and a half of wade fishing. The day before we arrived, flows on the Gray Reef section were bumped up to 2500 cfs, pretty much knocking that section out of the wade game.

We began the first 2 days drifting the Gray Reef section. There were good, hard fighting fish here in the 10”-18” range. We caught mostly Rainbows and a couple of Cutties and Browns. Both days on this section were a bit windy. On the second day, we got caught in an epic 60 mph Microburst with hail that just pounded the crap out of us. I wish I could fit that video into this post. It was most amazing. It drove us off the river and under cover for about 10 minutes.

The fishing on Gray Reef was good, not great. It was all a nymph game, floating through high plains desert. Honestly, a bit boring. I would take the Lower Sac over this section any day of the week. I think under lower flows, this would be more interesting as you would have much more character to the river.

On days 3 and 4 of drifting, we went up to the Miracle Mile section and fished for, and caught, many, many great Rainbows. Epic fish and fishing, catching around 15 large rainbows each day that peeled me into my backing on several occasions. Very similar to the Valley Steelhead that we have. Many multiple aerials of 2’-3’. The river was far more interesting to fish, and again, just about all nymphing. I threw some streamers, but had 0 action. These were a couple of days that are a lifetime memory for me, just large fish after large fish.

We also went to wade fish the Fremont Canyon section of the North Platte after this, but at 75 cfs, and roughly 35 fishermen per mile, we said no dice. We decided to retire to our local watering hole out in Alcova, where the bartenders’ name was Lucky. One thing I have learned in life, any guy named Lucky . . . Is unlucky.

Another interesting thing to me was that the guides wanted you sitting down when we were fishing from the drift boat???? They said they needed the “stealth factor”, but the water had plenty of color to it as far as I was concerned. I wonder if it is a safety thing or what?

All in all, a great trip, a great time.

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