I decided to head to Idaho and give The Narrows a shot today. On my way up I noticed that the ice was about half off of Foster Reservoir. Too bad the idiot canal company killed all the fish in it. Hopefully that means some of the other lakes in the area are opening up though. I began my way up the canyon and soon found myself trapped behind a road grader. I eventually got past the rumbling behemoth and made it to a long slow moving stretch that I thought might harbor some walleye. I didn't find any, but I did get to try my new spinning rod. Very nice, it casts like a dream and is ultra sensitive. One interesting thing was that I noticed a large pontoon with two people and a bunch of equipment on board was running down this run. I also noticed a truck driving very slowly with a radio transmitter hanging out the driver's side window pointing at the river. I wonder what kind of fish they were tracking? After 40 minutes of picking moss off my jig I decided to drive upstream and switch over to fly gear. I got down to the water and noticed clouds of midges and bwos coming off. I thought the fish would be going nuts, but oddly I didn't get a single hit or see a fish in several good stretches of water. I kept moving ahead and eventually encountered a very large sucker beached on the rocks and gasping for life. I remember seeing the same thing up here last March. Strange. I also found a smaller 20" sucker lying lifeless a little ways upstream. Just after that I saw my first trout, but they were acting weird too. They were sitting on the bottom motionless in a few inches of water. I dropped a San Juan Worm literally on one's head, and it didn't even move away. Maybe the DWR had electroshocked? Maybe a bait dunker had happened through recently leaving a swathe of destruction in it's path? I don't know, but thankfully I found active trout before too long. They were slurping in a big slackwater eddy. I tied on a Turk's with a midge emerger below it and worked them. It was hard to tell what was going on because of all the foam and debris on the surface. I switched flies several times and eventually I thought I saw my fly move. I set the hook and was finally fighting a fish. I brought it in only to find it foul hooked in the side with the Turk's. I kept trying different midge and bwo imitations, or at least the closest things I could find in my box, but to no avail. I got fed up and tied a tungsten head #20 green Copper John onto my dropper line. I forged ahead to another eddy. There were a couple of slurpers working the run, and to my surprise, one inhaled my Turk's. It was a healthy holdover rainbow from last year from the look of it. Unfortunately it slipped out of my hand, so no picture. I was almost out of time already, which had me pretty down. I just had to hit the deep riffle just upstream though, and I'm glad I did. I scored three more bows on the Copper John in the next five minutes.
I hurried back to the car and was off to work. Overall kind of a disappointing trip. I'm sure I would have caught quite a few had work not beckoned, but that's the way it goes. I sure hope Idaho starts treating me better.
Final Tally: 5 Rainbow Trout
Year Tally: 88 Fish
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