Saturday, January 22, 2011

Fishing the Oneida Narrows

For those who are not familiar with the Oneida Narrows, it is a put and take fishery located on the Bear River in the Southeast corner of Idaho. I have fished it a dozen times or so, and it is usually just that, a put and take fishery managed by the state of Idaho that gets stocked regularly with catchable size rainbows. There are some nice browns and white fish there, but mostly it is full of small sized rainbows.

This past Thursday I fished it for the first time this year. It started out like a typical day, pulling out rainbows from 8-10 inches from all the typical water you would expect to catch fish in during the winter. I was enjoying myself and trying to focus on my nymphing technique, to clean up a few of my bad habits. Its in these moments after falling into a routine of pulling in small fish when you are the most susceptible to surprise. That's exactly what happened when the rainbow pictured above slammed my flies. It oppened my eyes right up the way a splash of cold water to the face in the middle of winter would have. Its not the biggest rainbow in the world, or probably even the biggest in the Narrows, but coinciding with the warm winter day, it was simply a beautiful fish on a beautiful day that is now lodged into my memory for good. I love how fly fishing has the ability to shape unforgettable memories out of a typical moment, on a typical river, with an untypical fish (for the Narrows anyway). What a great moment!

Note: Flies of the day were once again the Bloody Prince (Size 14), and the Rainbow Warrior (Size 16).

2 comments:

Derek said...

nice fish bro! I assume you caught that fish on the warrior considering you lied about the bloody prince being the fly of the day.... or ever catching fish for that matter!!!!

Gilbert Rowley said...

You are funny! But yeah, it actually did take the warrior:) One of these days you ought to humble yourself and fish the Bloody. Pride is the root of all evil, and bad days on the river.