Dry Fly Innovations

Fish Count: 10

Nate and I made a run up to Silver Creek, which is located near the Sun Valley vicinity. While usually we would camp up there, spending one day on Silver Creek and the next on the Big Wood River, my uncle only had time to spend a single day. That meant that we need to leave Boise by five in the AM to get up to the fishing site at a reasonable hour. And so it was.

As we were driving up the freeways and highways to our destination, we couldn’t help but notice a long trough of storm cells that were moving in that same direction. It rained on us as we passed through the cells, pouring one moment and a mile or so down the road dry. The funny part was that on either side of the trough, there were blue skies, it was just the way that the land was funneling the storms right down the valley. The funny, yet disheartening, thing about all this was that Silver Creek was located in the middle of this valley and that if we tried to fish the creek right away, we were going to get soaked.

So we pull up right around 8:30 and while it wasn’t raining then, just over the horizon we could see the next storm on its way. The only thing we could do was wait. Time passes as the storm cells move over head, dumping on us and the creek we hope to fish. Finally just after ten, we decide to go and fish anyway, only I was just going to leave the camera in the rig. It is new and rain is probably not very good for it.

We get out on to Silver Creek to find that the water levels are extremely high for the little creek. The current was swift and the banks were flooded, giving the normally crystal clear water a brownish tinge. Regardless of the conditions, we fished on. Like our previous experience on the South Fork of the Boise, a flooded stream is not ideal to catch a load of fish. The high water brings in a lot of food that sinks to the bottom and the fish tend to feed on it then the hatches floating on the surface. And that was just what happened. A hatch of Pale Morning Dun’s, or PMD’s, was coming off and the water was just full of them. They had some size to them as well, yet bug after bug drifted past without getting any attention from the fish we knew were down there.

The fish, fat and happy with what they had been eating below, would occasionally rise and take a PMD. We are talking one every five minutes or so. There was no real rhythm and definitely no consistency to their feeding. But we chugged along anyway, despite the lightning over head, and continued to cast to them.  Silver Creek was not going to get us down.

Finally, after a few small 6 inchers, we found an interested Brown. He was a good looking fish too. We started catching a few here and there but in no great numbers, and we had to work for everyone. It is hard to get a fish to commit to a fly when they won’t even take the real bug. After a long afternoon in the creek, we decided to head back and regroup on at the rig.

We ate some lunch, and then headed down to the pond. The pond is a part of Silver Creek that is nearest to the road, and therefore is constantly pounded by fishermen. The fish, as a result, have become wise in the ways of fly fishing. Even so, we did get the drop on two nice sized rainbows before they decided to quit biting all together. We caught the first on a flying black ant and the second on a beetle.  The video below is one of those rainbows, and the flies are available at the bottom of the post.

This was my first Silver Creek experience and while I was tired, wet, and mosquito bitten, I had a good time.  We will return again and hopefully the weather will cooperate and the water levels be back to normal flow conditions.