July 3, 2007 - South Fork Boise

Last Tuesday, Eric Henderson and I floated the South Fork of the Boise in my 16 ft. wood driftboat. The river was flowing at 1840 cfs and we slid in around 1:30pm after I did my single-speed shuttle from Indian Rock. When we put in, there were quite a few boats on the river and it seemed fairly busy. However, as the day wore on very little traffic was evident which meant we had a chance to fish all the good holes along the way.

Good hatches of size #18 PMDs kept us busy on the upper stretches of the river. Above the village, Eric tagged and lost three nice rainbows who were rising slowly to duns in the film. I lost one also in this stretch but landed another in the same place Leon Hoffman caught his monster fish last year.














Later in the day, I spotted a very nice fish working in an eddy line and pulled over so Eric could have another go at it. I went downstream and fished another promising run but didn't catch anything. Eric came down about 15 minutes later with the fish on we had spotted earlier. It was a fatty!














Around 6PM, the caddis hatch started happening full-strength with clouds of bugs migrating upstream. It wasn't until we got to the Pig Pond that we finally found fish working to these flies. Long casts with small flies against fast currents made it very tough to reach these fish. Fortunately, I was able to tag a nice rainbow on a #18 caddis dry fly, but was frustrated by other fish working in more difficult spots. Eric also tagged a fish in this area, but it got off after about 10 seconds.















All in all, we had a great day with good conversation, lots of beef jerky, and a few very nice fish to bend our rods.