Our group has established itself at TroutHunter on the Henry’s Fork with most of the rooms taken as well as a good chunk of the guide staff accounted for. Today our group was peppered throughout the river system with anglers from Box Canyon all the way down below Ashton.
Yesterday I spent about half a day doing the “stalk and walk” along the banks of the river on the Railroad Ranch. Bug activity was light but I did find a few risers up on Mahogany Duns. I hooked two of the fish, but as is so often the case on this particular section of the river, I lost both fish to a combination of light tippet and heavy grass cover.
Pelicans on the Harriman Ranch section of the Henry’s Fork
This is always challenging fishing and I walked several miles up and down the banks of the river while only making a handful of casts. These fish are tough to hook and even harder to land due to the thick grass in the river which helps to make such an incredibly rich trout habitat.
One of the anglers in our group lost a tremendous brown trout at the net today. That’s always tough when you’ve seen the fish and you feel like it’s a caught fish. Fortunately not all the big ones got away.
Seth Judd landed this solid brown trout on the lower river below Ashton on a nymph
Charity and I decided to take a boat to Box Canyon only a few minutes from the lodge. This is swift, burly water inside shallow canyon walls. We took turns handling the boat and fishing and both of us did pretty well in terms of numbers. We put about 4 fish in the net in the 14″-16″ range with many more in the 9-11″ size range. With the swift water and numerous boulders it was tough to get many pictures while one of us handled the boat and the other fished.
Ian walks the boat through the pockets of Will’s Run in Box Canyon while Charity has her turn in the front of the boat
We’ve got plenty of fishing left this week and the weather forecast is even hinting at a chance of snow! We’ll keep you posted on our progress.