The past few weekends the local rivers, creeks, and lakes have been buzzing with activity. Local anglers are all trying to find the fish they have been waiting months to catch. Memorial day weekend always brings swarms of people with spring fever, and that itch to catch fish. So for the past two weekends we decided to bite the bullet and disconcern the crowds of people at the river and go have some fun in the spring sun. First stop the South Fork of the Boise river, for a memorial day float.
Saturday was the first day of the fishing season and groves of boaters also decided to float, luckily I had some local knowledge and knew the best place to put in without a line at the boat ramp.
Lunker Vision Base Camp
- Osprey looking for lunkers at the bottom of the Anderson Dam
The float was pretty mellow as there are not too many obsticals to navigate, and we made it the whole weekend with only one boat flipped 🙂 The dry fly activity was picking up, with adams trailing behind a cicada being the rig of choice.  After a great opening weekend and just avioding rain, we packed it up to take on another work week, and wait for our next adventure at Silver Creek for the upcoming brown drake hatch.
Tying one on
Floating right to camp is always the best choice.
Ahh Silver Creek….. When we first arrived it was a mellow Saturday with fishing picking up all along the creek. With prolific hatches of bugs happining all over it was looking to be a good week at the creek. Pmd’s were out in force at the Nature Conservancys portion of the creek, and the famous Brown Drake was awaiting its time to shine. So we set up camp and left the camper there for the week, so as not to miss the “Silver Creek Shit Show” aka the Brown Drake hatch.
Pat Lee even showed up on his “new” Honda Trail 90
Leaving the camper at the creek seemed to pay off, as we had beat the hordes of people and had no trouble finding our own private spot. After claiming our spot with the annoying “leave your chair trick” we had nothing more to do except wait. So with a cooler full of beer and some time to kill we sat and enjoyed awesome views Silver Creek has to offer.
Then as if out of nowhere the bugs start to fly in swarms all around the water for their annual hatch. Beers go down, and the rods come out as we all swarm to our spots. Sight fishing is awesome during this time because the Drakes bring out all the lunkers.
Tamara Harrison surrounded by the hatch
The Brown Drake
After a solid three evenings thick with Drakes, we finally packed it up and headed back to camp for one last bbq. Thursday was approaching and with it many more people. So we decided to call it for this year and let all the kooks try and get their drake fix.
BBQ at camp never a bad idea.
The crew at the pit.
Looking for Lunkers,
-Jeremy Black