By Chris Hunt
I suppose we looked pretty silly to motorists cruising across the Wilson Bridge just west of Jackson.
Two bundled up anglers standing in the ribbon of moving water and surrounded by snow measured in feet along the Snake River's banks likely drew a few curious stares. Add in the sideways snow storm and the bone-chilling wind, and I'm sure more than a few drivers, from the comfort of their heated cars, muttered something about "those crazy fly fishermen."
Crazy like a fox.
The Snake River in western Wyoming, from where it flows out of Yellowstone National Park south to Grand Teton National Park, through the small town of Wilson and on through the fabled Snake River Canyon en route to Palisades Reservoir on the Idaho line, never fishes better than it does in late winter and early spring, before run-off.
The few hardy anglers who know the river and its early season hot spots will be justly rewarded. In other words, sideways snow be damned. Go fishing. That's why God invented Gortex.
The river's braids below Wilson Bridge, usually tough to access without a boat, can be waded this time of year, allowing the adventurous angler willing to post-hole to the river access to some prime water where, for some reason, big Snake River fine-spotted cutthroats congregate before getting down to the amorous business of spawning. And then there's the whitefish, the much-maligned, underappreciated native that never quite seem so active as it does when the weather's least tolerable.
There's good holding water upstream of Wilson Bride, too, and farther downstream below Jackson, there are spots the willing fly fisher can get to, so long as a little snow isn't a deterrent.
And, honestly, it's now or never. Well, that's a bit drastic. But once runoff hits and the river blows out, don't expect any semblance of quality fishing until late June or even July, given the winter we've had this year. And even then, you'll be fishing to smaller fish - resident cutthroats that top out in the 12-14 inch range, rather than the migrating beasts that stretch the tape to 20 inches or more this time of year. Those big fish will have spawned and moved back downstream to the deep holes in the canyon, or perhaps all the way to Palisades, where they'll be out of reach to the bulk of the region's fly anglers.
On this particular day, a buddy and I walked downstream on packed snow to a series of braided channels below the bridge. Occasionally, one of us would punch through the snow's crust and find ourselves up to our thighs in snow, but believing the rewards would outweigh the cardiovascular sacrifice, we kept at it. After dozing through unmarked snow to the river's edge, we waded a thigh-deep riffle and immediately began exploring the river's ample holding water with Prince nymphs.
Things were slow at first, I hooked and landed one whitefish on the nymph in a surprisingly fast run, and then it seemed as if the bitter-cold wind and snow put the fish down. We wandered through a maze of braids and runs for about an hour, with nothing to show for it. Cursing the foul weather, we began to work our way back to where we entered the river, more than willing to trade the biting wind for a crisp, cold beer and a burger at the local brewery.
That's when I saw the swirl in the unsettled water where two braids come together in a deep run. We stopped and glared intently at the water through polarized lenses, the wind and the snow now just a mere annoyance.
Another swirl, this one from a big fish. Then an honest-to-goodness rise.
I quickly put my frozen fingers to work tying a size 16 Parachute Adams on 3X tippet and dropping a size 20 Zebra Midge about a foot below it. The small nymph would drift in about six inches of water and is decent imitation of an emerging midge on the Snake. The Adams, my go-to dry fly in just about any water, would float high and dry in the current and hopefully bring one of the Snake's big boys to the top.
My fishing buddy, Tom Reed (see his feature on the Bighorn River in this issue of the Angler), was gleefully following suit, and in minutes, we'd both hooked up with very respectable whitefish. The ugly step sibling of the West's trout, whitefish fight well when the water's cold, and they can reach respectable lengths in Wyoming's Snake. We were perfectly happy to bring these spirited fish to hand.
Moments later, Tom's line went tight, and the deep splash of a substantive fish echoed across the run. Looking up from my own drifting fly, I could tell the fish on Tom's rod was no whitefish. The deep, butter-colored belly of big Snake River cutthroat glowed through the dark water, and the fish made a quick downstream turn toward a nearby rapid.
"Don't lose that fish!" I yelled to Tom as he worked hard to keep the trout from getting into the fast water. "Don't lose it!"
By then, his line was slack. Looking across the run at me, Tom's face bore an incredulous smirk. The fish was gone.
"I think that was a 20-incher," he said. "I can't believe I lost it. You jinxed me."
"It was at least 20," I said, quickly realizing that my "coaching" hadn't made my friend feel any better about his sour luck. "Sorry, man."
Back to the pod of rising fish.
It became clear that most of the fish working the run were, indeed, whitefish, but we weren't deterred. Between the two of us, we hooked and landed close to 40 fish, some of them quite respectable.
As the day drew on, the weather got downright nasty BB-sized pellets of wind-borne snow replaced the soft, blowing flakes, and the wind began to howl. Flies cast upstream into the fishy run actually blew farther upstream thanks to the stiff, biting cold wind. Sadly, the fishing slowed to a crawl.
Finally, on what I audibly dubbed my last cast ("Just one more, and we're out of here"), I hooked up. And it was a big one.
Like the fish that attacked Tom's fly a good hour earlier, this fish had shoulders, and it immediately made a B-line to the fast water just downstream. Using a supple 6-weight to coax the big trout away from the rapid, I was able to maintain some semblance of control.
Tom, still smarting from losing that first big cutt, hollered across the run.
"Don't lose that fish!" he screamed. "Don't lose that fish!"
He's right, that encouraging advice doesn't help a bit.
Thankfully, I managed to the land the fish, a beast of a native cutthroat, by simply beaching it on the streamside rocks. The fish, deeply marked and spotted like all Snake River cutts, took the trailing nymph and tried to make off with it in a swirl of big-fish defiance.
Holding the fish across two hands, I looked up at Tom, who was grinning from ear to ear.
"I'm glad you didn't lose that fish," he said. I could tell he was still stinging from losing his big cutty earlier that day. "Clearly, this means the beer is on you."
Chris Hunt is the editor of Intermountain Angler. He can be reached via e-mail at chris@flyfishscribe.com.
