FISHING A CANYON OF THE SHOSHONE

Fishing is always fun when one is alone with no other anglers in sight. It is even more fun when you arrive at your location and see very few footprints made by humans, if any. That is what my long-time fishing companion and I experienced last week when we decided to venture into the steep canyon of the Shoshone River.

We could see the trails that were easy to negotiate from the road and the bluffs above the river, so we chose the path less traveled. Even though we had to make our own trail, it was worth the energy and effort once we had descended into an area better known by kayakers as the Widow Maker.

In this stretch of the canyon, there are huge boulders that had rolled off Rattlesnake Mountain or maybe even off Cedar Mountain a long time ago. These boulders made for great trout habitat because of the way they divided the river’s current into slower currents more suited for trout to hand out feed. This area stretches for several hundred yards and this is also where we found lots of rainbow trout to fool with our flies.

We deliberately planned our arrival to coincide with the blue wing olive hatch. I mentioned in last week’s column that this peak time occurs around 10 to 11 a.m. We arrived at 10:30 to find the hatch was not quite heavy enough to bring trout to the surface, but there were visible rings in the slower water behind the boulders mentioned. They were a good indication that we could begin with a dry fly and catch those rising until the hatch increased in intensity and the trout fed on the surface greedily and without fear because the sun never hits the water in this part of the canyon after the time changes in November.

I chose to fish a type of simple emerger called a sparkle dun while my partner went with another great emerger pattern called the Klinkhammer, a fly that originated in Iceland to be used on finicky grayling, and a fly that also works well wherever trout, grayling and whitefish abide. Both flies were a size 16 with olive bodies that hung just below the surface when cast upon the water’s surface. Lucky for me, I had chosen a spot from which to cast that had what appeared to be several good-sized trout hanging on the edge of a current seam.

These fish were rising rhythmically and steadily. All I had to do was place a good cast above these trout, then let the current bring my fly slowly down the river to where the trout were sitting just under the surface. My first cast was successful, and I was quickly hooked fast to a leaping rainbow that pulled line and put a good bend in my Sage XP 3 weight fly rod. My second, third and fourth casts into this same area also resulted in hooking and landing three more trout within the next 10 minutes. Awesome!

I looked a bit downstream of my position in the Shoshone River to see that my buddy was also fast to some trout behind another large boulder. He was doing his best to bring these trout to the net quickly and before the fish were too played-out to be released back among their brethren. The action was constant. If we were not hooked fast to a trout deceived by our flies, we were watching them leap off our hooks as they sailed high into the air on multiple jumps after jumps. Both of us were having fun and didn’t move from our positions until we had either caught all the trout rising, or because the trout we had been catching had given the signal to the other trout that something was amiss in that area. If I didn’t feel like a kid that had played hooky from church to go fishing, I would be lying. It was fun, fun and more fun. Maybe even kind of sinful, depending on your religious beliefs.

The BWO hatch slowed down about 1:30 as the wind kicked up and began blowing down the canyon. The wind was strong enough to knock down the adult duns on the water which meant the two of us anglers were catching fewer and fewer trout on dries. Not to be outsmarted, we quickly tied on a foot-long piece of tippet to the back of our dry flies and dropped a sparsely dressed Euro-style light olive colored nymph below. It wasn’t long after making the switch that we were back in business, so to speak, and bending our fly rods once again as the trout fed on nymphs coming to the surface, or upon the drowned duns that could not get off the water to fly to shore.

If climbing down the steep sides of the cliffs in the Shoshone Canyon to wet a line is above your pay grade, you should know the blue winged olive action extends all way down the lower Shoshone River to well below the Willwood Dam. Access is easier in the town of Cody, but you will probably not be alone due to the ease and convenience of access. Again, the best time to be on the water for this hatch, especially on an overcast and windless day, is between the hours of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I recommend 9-to-12-foot leaders with the tippet ending in either 5X or 6X for a better drift and less splashdown disturbance after the cast. The trout are fat, strong and also looking forward to meeting you.

Republished from The Cody Enterprise