TLAPC officially opened it’s doors this past week and with consistent river flows of 10,700 cfs for several weeks the fishing was good considering the water is still off color and there isn’t any dry fly action. We had 8 boats going out on Monday and Tuesday and everbody caught fish while dodging rain showers and watching strike indicators. The water temperature was 50 degrees and all the guides were excited that the Salmon Flies were probably just days away.
Marshall Geller the lodge owner decided to stay an extra day as he has some friends coming into the lodge so he asked if I was available to fish with him on Wedneday.. I said let’s do it. We were both looking forward to a nice day on the river together as it had been several years since we had fished. The forecast was for rain, but that wasn’t the bad news, we quickly found out that the river had been raised overnight to 14,000 cfs…bummer…huge bummer. That type of jump almost certaintly puts the fish down and with rain in the forecast we almost bailed to go see a movie in Idaho Falls. But it wasn’t raining yet and you don’t own a fishing lodge to go see movies in I.F…so we decided to give it a shot. The fishing was really slow but not impossible we managed to find several fish in riffles and side channels and as the day went on it seemed like the fish were starting to feed a little bit more. All the fish we caught were on nymphs and it didn’t rain that much at all, in fact we finished the day with sunny skies and smiling faces. We were both glad we spent the day outside on the river.
Now for the bad news…that was yesterday (Wednesday)…the river is up to nealy 18,000 cfs today and could go up even more in the coming days. With all the rain we have had (18 days in a row now) the reservoirs are all full and their is simply nothing to do with the water except let it flow. Hopefully flows will stabilize in a week or so. Remember you can click the link in the column on the right side of this page for current flow information and we will keep you updated on the fishing and flows right here.
Keep your fingers crossed for low flows!
Chris “Jigidy” Jensen
