A Lone Cheer for BYUI: The Fork

I'm not a BYU fan. But I am a fan of one of their satellite campuses. And for one week out of the year, I'm grateful my nephew and good friend attend this satellite campus, namely BYU-Idaho, but I still like to keep it old school with Ricks. And why am I a fan of him and his attendance at Ricks? It isn't the education that my donations subsidize, it isn't the gorgeous temple a few minutes from his apartment, it isn't the bucolic farming town that is Rexburg, ID, even though all of these things are certainly plusses.

It is simply because of the rivers and only because of the rivers in and around Rexburg, Idaho that I am a fan. I retract that now and will reduce it down to just a river, actually The River.

This is not any old body of water to a fly-fisherman, but a world class, blue-ribbon, text-book, foam-at-the-mouth river. This is the river that hosts fly-fishing documentaries, fly-fishing articles, fly-fishing novels, fly-fishing memories, and fly-fishing dreams. To many, this is the greatest river in the country to pursue trout on a fly, if not in the world.

I speak of none other than the Henry's Fork of the Snake River. I'd better throw in it's tributaries as well.

Zak and Sam again allowed me to utilize their humble apartment as a take-off point for their summer fishing vacation. Sam was pregnant at the time and made for a very gracious and patient hostess. I'm sure all the fishing stories and stratagems got pretty boring for her to listen to, but she is and always has been a "great sport" in general. This was the second year we had done this trip on this river system, so we had a bit more confidence and knowledge of what to fish and when than in the 2008 trip. The question was: could we improve our results?

Answer: no and yes.

No: We failed to catch a sizable trout on the Henry's Fork. By sizable I mean something above 14 inches. Note below that Zak did catch a sizable whitefish which fought more like a log than a living organism. We were still grateful for the bend in his rod, the smile on his face, and the exhausted biceps from a 15 minute fight. Zak also had a huge brown trout on, that non-chalantly broke his line when he realized he was hooked. That would have been the trout to mount on the cabin wall. I know because I saw it with mine own eyes.



Yes: We did do better on the famous Railroad Ranch Section this year. The incredible Green Drake Hatch did indeed occur for us on 7/5/2010, which was quite the sight. Large size #10-12 "sailboat" flies helplessly floating down the smooth water, to get pounded by small fish that could hardly mouth them properly. The spinner fall was sweet at dusk and yielded some nicer fish. Why is it that every hooked fish through The Ranch fights like it's at least a few inches bigger and a few ounces heavier than it really is? These fish have attitude, spunk, and smarts. I simply like to consider these fish snobs that have way too much food and way too much time to be picky, so when they're caught they get ticked. As always, the views were incredible, and I wanted to sit and soak in the beautiful surroundings more than fish for the first hour, something that rarely happens when I have a rod in my hand and am on a trout river.



Oh yeah, we caught dozens of fish on the Warm River to boost our fishing confidence. We also discovered the pristine Robinson Creek, running through what felt like rugged and high bear country.



All in all, it was an incredible trip, one that I hope to do either annually or bi-annually. We still haven't caught the mounter out of the Henry's Fork of the Snake, but at least we have confidence that such fish do exist there and can even be fooled into taking huge flies now and again. So I will continue to hold onto the memories of the past and dream of big fish in the future on this river.

Meanwhile, I just need to figure out a way to keep Zak at Ricks for a few more years. Otherwise, I need to wait until my next neice, nephew, or friend goes up there so I have another fishing take-off point.