Trail Creek Pass & October Storm

First Snow.  Trail Creek Road.  October.

Camera: iPhone 4

 

Here's the USGS graph for the Big Wood River.  Two days ago the Wood was just under 200 cfs and right around the historic mean and then some water came in the form of rain and snow.  The flow more than doubled as is evident in the graph below.  Still wet and rainy and snowy here...  The storm is supposed to taper off on Friday and go to partly cloudy with highs in the 50's on Saturday.

iPhone Photography

We had one brief hole in the sky yesterday on our way over to Mackay. The image above was taken and edited with the iPhone.

Sand & Water.

Camera: iPhone 4

Kokanee Salmon

Kokanee Salmon Carcass

Kokanee are the land-locked form of sockeye salmon.  Due to the fact they do not go to the ocean where there are vast sums of food, their size is far smaller and grow to around 14" in length.  Kokanee are native to British Columbia, Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Siberia & Japan and have been introduced to lakes and hatcheries throughout the world.

Nikon D200

Nikon 35 f2 lens

Silver Creek Osprey

An empty taloned Osprey just after a dive on Idaho's Silver Creek.

 

Camera: Nikon D3S

Lens: Nikon 80-200 afs f2.8

A Spiderweb Full Of Tricos & An Interested Rainbow Or Two

 

 

 

Location: Silver Creek, Idaho.  The above series of images was taken today.  The time was around 1:30 PM.  Glassy water and not a trace of wind and callibaetis doing a mild callibaetis dance and hoppers pushing out through the tall dry grasses and trout feeding on various mayflies and even a floating artificial Morris #8 hopper pattern attached to nothing but the undulatory current floated by.  A fisherman upstream must have lost this sacred hopper pattern and I was lucky enough to have spotted it run through a pod of fish and watched one fish hammer it and spit it out and then another rainbow sipped it like fine food and spit it out too as though the foam and thread and hook were an insult to their fine spring creek palettes.  Watching spring creek trout feed and especially at Silver Creek in the Fall is a fundamental learning experience.  After some time observing mainly rainbows taking various bugs, all kinds of thoughts come to mind.  What are the trout actually thinking just prior to a "take"?  What makes one fish interested in bug A when another fish won't even consider bug A?  So I grabbed a small wad of spiderweb laced with dozens of tricos and dropped it on the feeding lane.  The result?  A resounding YES!  The series of images above I took of the floating trico-laced-spiderweb running the perfect drift to a zealous rainbow.  Call this rainbow, "Spidy."  I ran another gob of web and tricos to a different rainbow--the bottom image below-- and the same result.  I have done this same thing a few times over the course of the last two seasons but never photographed this luxury dining.  To talk about this phenomenon could only result in rolling of the eyes or "Oh, Sures" or even, better yet, quiet acknowledgement of more unecessary fishperbole.  Some time passed and I had a group of men locked out of their car watching me grab these gobs of spiderwebs and dropping them upstream of different fish.  The guys were from out of state and I could here one them say,"Silver Creek fish are too smart for that."  I didn't say anything to them or mention the fact that minutes prior it actually worked.  No other fish were interested in the "web".  Just Spidy and one other rainbow took the wad.  So why those two rainbows and no others...?

 

Rainbow taking a spiderweb laced with tricos.  Silver Creek, Idaho

Camera: Nikon D3S

Lens: Nikon 80-200 f2.8 AFS

Lost River Range, Idaho

 

 

Lost River Range & Smoke

f7.1, 1,250th of a second, iso 200, -1 ev.

Here is a series taken this morning around 9 AM of the Lost River Range.  Contingent on the wind direction, fires in the Salmon/Chalis area are sending smoke to the Wood River Valley and the Lost River Valley.  The subdued smoky light, especially early and late, helps create dramatic images...  

Camera: Nikon D3S

Lens: Nikon 80-200 f2.8 afs

September & The Big Lost River & A Quick Sun Valley Fishing Report

 

 

Big Lost River, Idaho

Thunderheads and just a hint of Fall color.  It's the slow change from Summer to Fall.  Overnight lows in the upper 30's and highs somewhere in the mid 70's.  Look for hatches and conditions only to improve as daytime highs begin to cool.  Crowds on the river have already waned substantially post Labor Day Weekend.  Tricos and baetis and a few remaining crane flies on the Big Lost.  The current flow on the Lost is 267 cfs.  Silver Creek too should be getting better and better as the day time highs cool.  The 1:16 PM callibaetis event is becoming more and more consistent while as usual the baetis have gotten SMALLER.  Bring the smallest baetis you have along with a bag full of patience...  Damsel flies, beetles, flying ants and hoppers too.

 

Camera: Nikon D3S

Lens: Nikon 24 PC-E

Nikon Micro 105 Plus Extension Tubes

Backlit mayfly spinner

 

Frontlit mayfly spinner

The use of extension tubes allows for greater "magnification" but greatly reduces the depth of field essentially making the focus plane extremly narrow.  On a full frame sensor like the Nikon D3S, using extension tubes also causes some vignetting--darkening of the corners.  These images were taken handheld using an iso of 1,600 in order to get a shutter speed fast enough and an aperture around f10 for a reasonable level of depth of field.  On cold mornings mayflies and bugs in general are far more still and much easier to capture...

Camera: Nikon D3S

Lens: Nikon Micro 105 with extension tubes

Sun Valley Fishing Report

 

Big Lost River Rainbow

Smokey sky and fish on...

Getting it done on the Lower Lost.

Camera: Nikon D3S

Lens: nikon 24 PC-E

Smokey skies here and in the Lost River Valley.  Surreal warm light and high temps in the 70's.  The fishing is all over the board from quite good to slow and just hope where you decide to go is quite good...  The trico thing on Silver Creek is essentially over and we are transitioning into the Fall hatch cycle which usually means things don't get going until later in the morning and will, contingent on the temps, sometimes last until 3 or so.  The baetis on Silver Creek will only get smaller!  That means arm yourselves with #22 & #24 baetis patterns and #16 callibaetis for the afternoon--usaully around 1 PM or so--callibaetis spinner fall.  Tricos, however, are on the Lower Lost and on the Big Wood from about Hailey downstream.  The fishing should just get better and better as we creep farther into September...