Fishing Report

[FlyFishinFool]

Went fishing at BSSP for 5 days (Mon - Fri) the week before the 4th of July weekend (you could not get me to a state park over a 3-day holiday weekend, all the yahoos come out in droves)! Anyway - the water depth was close to normal, clarity was pretty good and the flow was decent. They cut the weeds in zone 2 & 3 the prior week, and cut the weeds in zone 1 on Tuesday while I was there - actually the weeds almost did not apprear to need cutting, probably the cleanest weed cutting I have seen in a very long time. The number of people was suprisingly light - I thought there would be more people visiting the week before the holiday weekend to make a really long vacation week, but only one day was the stream even slightly crowded in the mid-morning (8am-11am) and only once in the mid-afternoon (3pm-5pm)timeframe, all the other days and all other times, the stream was pretty empty with lots of room to fish, wade, and move up/down stream. Several mornings there were ony 3-4 people on the entire island section of the stream, and a couple of evenings, by 7:30pm there was no one from the big hole above the hatchery dam all the way as far as I could see beyond the disabled access piers. Overall fishing was very good, of course some folks complained about the size of the fish, but I caught a lot of fish; I caught a few small ones, many average sized ~12+", quite a few really decent fish (14"-16") and a bunch of great fish well over 16" - all in all a really good week of fishing. Fish were being caught on red copper johns, yellow/black maribous, and almost anything small, brown and fuzzy (woolies, midges, scuds, etc.). I also saw folks catching a decent number of fish by stripping brown or bright green woolies, and green or blue cracklebacks. All in all, I had a great week fishing, met some nice folks who came all the way up from Texas to fish Bennett Spring, and on one day I caught more fish than I have ever caught on any single day while fishing at Bennett Spring (more than 30+ years). Maybe I will see y'all down (or up) on the stream the next time I go to BSSP.

A side comment - very early one morning, as I walked down to the stream, I saw an older gentleman walking onto one of the disabled access piers carrying what appeared to be an extremely large plastic tacklebox - you know, the kind that is usually carried only in a large bass boat and probably weighs about 20 lbs? All I know is he was tilted to the tacklebox side quite a bit, so it must have been pretty heavy. The stream was very foggy that morning, and you could not see more than 50 foot or so....so about 30 minutes after the whistle blows, you could hear the most god-awful racket coming from a couple hundred yards upstream by the disabled access pier - sounded like a metal box of tools falling down a short flight of stairs. Apparently someone (the older gentleman?) had fallen over the tacklebox and dumped the contents onto the concrete walkway. I only heard a couple of muffled comments, but for the next 10 minutes there was a constant noise of someone droping all kinds of "stuff" back into the tacklebox. I guess the lessons to be learned are: 1) don't bring anything you don't have to when you go fishing - e.g. less is better, and 2) close and latch your tacklebox after every time you get something out or put something in - it will save a lot of headaches in the long run. I watched someone learn the last one the hard way on a float trip when the canoe flipped with an unlatched tacklebox and he lost all his gear!

[brittsnbirds]

FFN,

I was down the first part of the week on the 20th of June. My experience was a little different. Arrived on Sunday and pulled the trailer up to CG 5 to get set up. Appeared that the place was almost abandoned. Went to the south end of the CG to a preferred site. Backed in and hooked up the power to get the A/C on (it was humid and hot), no power. Checked my inverter to make sure nothing was tripped, everything was ok. Pulled out and slipped it into another spot, again no power. A fellow from a few spots up noticed that I was in and out of couple places came over. He advised that they had a bad lighting storm the night before and blew all the power out to the south end of 5. It also blew his inverter up on his 5th wheel, OUCH$$$. He said that they worked on power problem and fixed it, apparently they didn't. I pulled out and went to the north loop of 5 where there were several trailers set up with a/c running. Got a spot that worked and was in like flint. Headed down the hill to pay and located one of the Hosts on a golf cart. Told him that the power wasn't working. His reply was "yes it is". I told him what occurred and he inferred that there was something wrong with my trailer. I told him that it worked fine in the north loop. Funny how the south end had a problem and my trailer didn't work. After a few more volley's of information back and forth I parted company with the excuse that I would check my trailer out to be sure (even though it was 76 degrees inside and 90 outside). From that point on everything went fine as far as operations go. Fishing was another story.

As far as the fishing goes, that experience was probably the closest to my experience fishing the Moyie River in Idaho with hopper patterns several years ago. Little fish attacking the terrestrials. Big problem was I wasn't in Idaho and the little fish that I was catching were Rainbows rather than Cutthroat or Brooke trout!! What a disappointing week. Most fish were little to small and the larger fish that I caught were still on the slim side. I had a pretty good time with the Cicada patterns. My best bet was a little p/t parachute emerger pattern that I tied up. If they appeared to be feeding on the surface I put that bad boy on and would do pretty good. Overall it was my go to pattern. The rest of the time things were pretty slow.

As far as people, it was nice up to Wednesday, then they started rolling in. We headed out Thursday with no regrets!! Over all I was disappointed in the sheer number of smaller fish that I caught and observed caught. Maybe later in the year things will change.

[rcguy]

Thanks for the reports guys. Makes me want to get down to the stream. I just haven't been able to get away lately. I'll make in August!!!

FFF,loved the tackle box story. Now that's one I can relate to!!!..unfortunately.

[FlyFishinFool]

brittsnbirds - The water water level & flow-rate continued to drop when I was there, perhaps that improved the fishing? All I know is I had a blast!

rcguy - I will also be going back down in August. Let me know when you are going down and I will look for you & the silver egg!