Fishing on the Ranch water was
iffy at best, particularly the first few days. When we arrived on
Saturday, the river was rising from 900cfs to Monday's level
of1300cfs. A few of us made an evening trip downriver to Chester where
Dave discovered a heretofore unknown whitefish rearing pool. We each
donated a half pint of blood to the local mosquito bloodbank. I doused
myself with Green Ban, a double-strength herbal mosquito repellent,
from Australia. In America, it should be marketed as a mosquito
attractant.
We had only one morning and two
evenings when the wind layed down but the eagerly anticipated hatches
were sparse and mostly ignored by the trout. However, on each of those
days, I came up to bat against some of the trophy-sized rainbows that
the Henry's Fork on the Railroad Ranch is famous for. I went 0 for
3. I cast short 30-40 foot downstream drifts with PMD's, PMD
cripples, Rusty Spinners, Flav duns and cripples, both Green and Gray
Drake duns and cripples. I stuck one but it broke off the 6x tippet
when it turned into the current. I wished I had a size18 fly that
imitated a dead, folded over olive Flav spinnerbecause it was the only
thing floating in the film I didn't have.
My friend, Rick fished the only
real hatches of the week. His fishing was timed to the couple hours he
could get away in the afternoon when his daughter and friend
entertained themselves while they remained in walkie-talkie contact on
channel 7. As the rest of us were driving up and down the river
looking for feeding fish, Rick was getting to the river once a day,
when he could, and casting a small Flav emerger to a lot of good-sized
trout up and working the only hatch of the day.
We left the Ranch a day early and
drove north to our friend's ranches in Mackey and found bugs on the
water and big cooperative trout.
Leland.
