Tag: ID

Guide Talk, Snake River, South Fork

SF Snake

By TB

We’ve spent a lot of time in the Jackson Hole area over the years, visiting Krista (daughter) and Chris (son-in-law) who worked at Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park as well as at the Jackson Hole ski resort.   One of Chris and Krista’s friends who worked with them was Tim Smith.  Chris and Tim actually worked together at Snake River Angler and of course, Tim was at Chris and Krista’s wedding at the lodge.

We have fished with Tim on the Snake River before, so when we were planning our “River Ramble” trip, we called Tim to take us on a river he’d been wanting to show us for some time…. the South Fork of the Snake.  Tim guides out of the Lodge at Palisades Creek, a gorgeous fly fishing lodge property in Irwin, ID.  We headed out for the river, not really knowing what to expect.

When we arrived at the river, we were awestruck.  It was absolutely gorgeous.   Our trip involved first class fly fishing, of course, but also included incredible canyons, eagles everywhere and geologic features that were amazing, including “the air conditioner”.   We caught both Snake River and Yellowstone cutthroats, rainbows, cut bows and more.  It was an amazing day on the South Fork and our guide talk with Tim, conducted on the river in the “air conditioner” was so special.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed our day with Tim.

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Guide Talk, Henry's Fork, Snake River

TroutHunter TJ

By TB

For years, we’d heard from our son-in-law, Chris Drake, of the difficulty in fishing the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River near Island Park, ID.   How the fish all had Ph.D.’s and were easily spooked.  How perfect presentations and drifts were essential to catching fish.  Well, we saw these clear, flat waters outside the TroutHunter fly shop in Island Park, ID, but decided our best bet fishing was in sections where there was a little more current and structure that would lend itself to having better luck.

We’d also heard about the local charm of Island Park, ID.   According to wikipedia, “the city was incorporated by owners of the many lodges and resorts along U.S. Route 20 in 1947, primarily to circumvent Idaho’s liquor laws that prohibited the sale of liquor outside of city limits.  It is only 500 feet wide in most locations and, at 33 miles (53 km), claims to have the longest “Main Street” in the world.”  TroutHunter’s fly shop, lodge and restaurant/bar are one of the highlights along the route.  We were fortunate to have booked our guide from the shop and to have met friends for dinner at the restaurant/bar. More on that in another post!

We met our guide, TJ Powell, at the TroutHunter fly shop on a cold, crisp October morning and headed off for a section of the river nearer Aston, ID.  When we put in, we knew it was going to be a  great day because we immediately came upon fish.  They weren’t the giants that inhabited the Railyard section of the Henry’s Fork, but beautiful wild trout that fought like crazy.

We had a blast fishing with TJ and hope you enjoy his “Guide Talk” video about fishing on the Henry’s Fork.

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Craters of the Moon, Lagniappe

Moon Landing

By TB

On our way to fish Silver Creek near Picabo ID, we took a road trip to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.  Talk about a unique landscape….wow!   When we first saw the sign welcoming us to the area, we’d already been noticing the landscape dotted with black lava rocks.  As we continued into the Preserve toward the visitor’s center, the landscape changed to something out of a sci-fi movie.

I won’t bore you with all the details about the Preserve, you can read about them here.  However, I would highly encourage anyone driving anywhere near here to stop and tour the area.  If you get a chance, take a guided trip into some of the “caves” which are really lava tubes.  Some are small as in the “Craters” landscape picture above and some are large enough to hike into (or crawl ?).

We had a great volunteer guide who took us into the Indian Tunnel lava tube and showed us around the lava flows.   Who knew there were different kinds of lava flows???  She also convinced us to try out another “cave”, Beauty Cave, which had walls and floors covered with sparkling rocks.

You will notice one of the pictures is of me, popping out of a hole in the ground.  In reality, we’d taken a secondary route out of Indian Tunnel which had us climb over two different sets of fallen lava rocks in the tube (see Barb’s pic), then up about 30 feet and out of a man-hole sized hole.  What we found exciting was that when we climbed out of the hole, we were in the middle of the lava flow, no trail, just some poles about 100′ apart which you had to traverse between to finally get back to the official trail through the area.  The only crazies who did this in our group were Barb and me, along with one other couple out of our tour group.   We’ll be talking about our “off trail” caving adventure for ages.  For now, we hope you enjoy these pics from our “road trip” to the moon.   Ramble On!

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