January/February is always slammed with Outdoor shows, and then I work for two months afterwards to get caught up. Then bear, turkey, mushroom and whistle pig hunting and crappie fishing take over the end of April to May. This year, though, four more trips popped up as soon as the show season was over, so I am wayyyy behind.
A slight reprieve popped up at the last minute, though. John and Liz, who own the River Retreat Lodge over in the Swan Valley (Irwin), called and told me that the fishing was hot. In about .32 seconds, Ron Spomer and I were lining up a trip to run over and do some flyfishing with them. A couple of years ago, while fishing with them, John had told me that he has unbelievable fishing in March near dusk.
He’d said he’d absolutely drill 20-22-inch rainbows and some nice cutthroats for about three hours. I’ve been wanting to go check it out ever since. Due to a busy show season, I rationalized in my fish addicted mind that I was ready to get away and decompress for a minute.
Monday morning, I jumped in the truck and took off on two wheels for Swan Valley. We all met up, shot the bull for a minute, and then took off for his secret spot. Wow, this had to be some of the best flyfishing that I’ve ever had. There were a million midges drifting on the water’s surface. John had told me to bring some 18-20 nymphs, emergers and dry midges. He was right.
It is nice to have a knowledgeable guide, which I guess is why you hire guides. He knew all of their feeding habits, where they’d be and how to fish for them. They’d be feeding on dry flies for 15-20 minutes, and then we’d have to switch to emergers. The wind was a big factor in this scenario. If it was windy, it’d blow the flies off the top of the water, and you had to go to emergers. If the wind died down, there’d be a ton of fish surfacing in front of you, but either way, you’d be catching fish.
Of course, whether with dries and emergers, we used a big grasshopper for a strike indicator since we were fishing with size 20 flies.
There were a quadrillion midges on the surface, so it is probably a miracle that you can get a fish to hit your fly out of all of the other choices. But then, John told me that there were 4,500 fish per mile, so that helps your odds, which translates into that even little Tommie can catch fish.
I netted one 19-inch cutthroat that was plump, almost like a decent bass, and then the second day, James, a buddy of John, fished with us and he hooked up with a nice 22-inch cutthroat. He fought it for a minute or two, and then it hit ramspeed, spooled him, snapped his line and that was it.
Wow, the fish were healthy. John was a little disappointed since we didn’t net anything over 19 inches, but I was plenty happy. He said that on a scale of 1-10 that it was a 7 day, but even the 12-inch rainbows were plump, healthy fish.
I don’t have a clue, but probably ¼ of the fish we caught were cutthroat, and the rest were rainbows. All fish were healthy. I guess we did catch four nice whitefish, which I kept and brought home and smoked.
I filleted them, marinated the fillets for a couple of hours, and then smoked them on a board. According to John, fishing should be good for another two weeks. By the time you read this article, it will be closer to one week. If you want to have the flyfishing trip of your life, you ought to run over and see John and check it out. (307) 248-3864
You know how it is with fishing, it’s hard to remember exactly how many fish you netted and how many hits you had, but I bet that I had over 70 hits between 5:00 and 8:00 the second day.
You probably know all of this, but I’d recommend taking a 5-wt. rod. Normally, John has to snowshoe in for 20 minutes, but this year, due to no snow, you’ll drive right up and have a short walk to the spot. John recommends wearing two pairs of socks so your feet don’t get cold.
They have a nice, comfortable lodge, great food, tons of fish AND…. What else do you need? John said we only had a 7 on a scale of 1-10 for fishing, that there should be some 20-22 inch fish any day. The last day I had hits from three nice ones, but didn’t net them.
Wow, what a great trip and what a great way to kick off the Spring. Ron and I are already scheming to run back over there soon. P.S.-Don’t you dare be in my fishing spot.
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shops.