South Fork of the Boise - 07/11/2010

We hit the road for the South Fork later in the afternoon hoping for the best – fish up on Caddis and possibly a Salmonfly or two. Coming up from Black’s Creek, we decided to start out on the lower river and scout for heads.

Sure enough, we peeked over an embankment and found exactly what we were looking for – one rise, another rise, and another, and so on. Even better, once we actually got to the level of the water we realized the fish were coming up about a rod’s length in front of us.

We could see the Caddis buzzing the willows so we watched the inside bank really close for rise forms. Two fish slashed simultaneously and that basically spelled out the prescription - Caddis Emergers.

Tim rigged up a Tailwater Striving Caddis and began to strip out line. By accident he dabbed the fly down on the water and it began to drift back. Two seconds later he was trying to land a hot fish five feet in front of him.

After hopscotching a bit we finally made it a couple more feet up the bank. There we found a decent crashing on adult Caddis in a really tough spot – right below a nest of dead willow branches (fly eaters). This one was a little tougher so we had to get positioned just right in order to get a decent drift.

The first cast was inside, and the second, then too far outside. Finally, the current off the seam shifted and brought the Tailwater Caddis down the line in just the right spot. That was where he wanted it – right of the edge of the stick.

Once we landed that one, we made our way up the bank to a nice submerged rock garden to find three more really nice fish up slashing. The light was bad and there weren’t really many adults on the water. We figured we’d give it one more go-round with a Harrop’s CDC Bubble Back Caddis.

On the first cast Tim hooked up with a nice one. Unfortunately we never saw him. Once they get out into the current you can pretty much point your rod downstream and wave goodbye.

From there we tried a few more casts and got another one to eat just to the outside of the pocket. He ran up the water column like a rocket and cartwheeled into the bank. We got him to the net but the commotion pretty much killed the surface activity.

We decided to call it a night and had nice little drive back to town.