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).

Winter Fly Fishing Tip

If you love fly fishing in solitude winter is your time to fish! Fish continue to feed year round, so opportunities to catch fish still exist. There is a new winter fly fishing tip from flytying123.com that gives good insight on what flies to fish during winter. Check it out, dress warm, and get out on your favorite river!

Winter Fly Fishing on the Blacksmith Fork

Last tuesday it started snowing... it continued for two and a half days and dropped over two feet along the banks of one of my favorite rivers. Regardless of the weather I made plans to fish on the second of the two snow filled days. However, it quickly became evident to me that I would be wasting my time when I noticed the temperature outside was a dismal six degrees and there were large ice chunks constantly coming down the river (reported to me by someone who had driven past the river at midday). I saved myself the misery and tortured myself another way, by waiting until to today to fish.Today's temps were quite a bit warmer than last week, in fact while I fished today it was actually around 12 degrees outside! Stunning I know, how could I sit inside on a sunny paradisiacal day like today? It actually was a wonderful day on the river, besides it being a little chilly. I fished a couple of hours and caught a half dozen fish, none exceeding 12 inches, but beautiful trout nonetheless.