Kelly Creek Idaho - Day 2

August 17, 2014 - Kelly Creek, Idaho



The morning view up Cayuse Creek from our camp.

As we arose from the tent the following morning, moisture was in the air.  A low layer of fog enveloped the canyons around us, and dew covered all the leaves and grasses.  Cheryl and I changed, took care of breakfast duties, and got ready to fish.  Just as we were leaving camp the fog burned off and we were treated to clear, beautiful blue skies the rest of the day. 

Fresh wild raspberries made camp breakfast even tastier!

We had decided to hike upstream on Kelly Creek for roughly an hour until we found some appealing water to fish.  After about forty-five minutes we found a beautiful hole, and decided that it was as good of a place as any to start.  Unfortunately, the first hole yielded only one small fish.  The next hole upstream was even better than the one below, but again, only one small cutthroat came to our flies.  Disheartened by the lack of success, I played dirty and tied on a double nymph rig.  On the first cast I landed a good sized whitefish.  The next cast brought in another small cutthroat.  I knew that I could catch fish on nymphs, but I came all this way to catch fish on dry flies, and that's what I intended to do!

My first whitefish of the trip - on my first cast with a nymph - surprise!

We worked our way upstream, but the river soon entered a narrow canyon.  There were beautiful plunge pools every thirty feet, but for the most part they were devoid of fish, or at least fish of any size.  In the meantime, I got stuck across the river from Cheryl, and I'm pretty sure that I earned a Ph.D. in Rock-hop-ology that morning!  Eventually the river opened up again and we were able to catch some decent fish, but not nearly at the rate nor of the size that we had caught the previous evening.

Cheryl fighting a fish across the river.

The scenery and the river?  Beautiful!

After relaxing for a bit and taking in some calories, we decided to head back down to camp for an early dinner, and then head downstream below the Cayuse Creek confluence so we could fish until dark.  Again, we had better luck in the bigger part of the river (at the confluence of Kelly Creek and Cayuse Creek they are about the same size).  However, neither the size nor the frequency of the fish was what it had been the day before.

Some beautiful westslope cutthroat specimen!

We went to bed that night with plans to fish Cayuse Creek in the morning.  Surprisingly, sleep came quickly!