Snake River

October, 13, 2009. Spent last night on Noah's "L" couch playing footsies with Ben all night. Woke up early and hit a coffee shop so Ben could finish some work before we hit the stream. Light rain met us through warmer weather. The guide called and said we should get there as soon as possible due to the morning warmth. Seemed like a good sign... As we loaded the boat and got ready to push off the sun was cracking through the clouds and we couldn't help but anticipate a good day on the river. The fat, double-humpy, streamer-size dry flies the guide "Boots" was tying on just got us down right giddy. As has been the case, our expectations were hardly met.

Ben and I had two fish on right away, I lost mine immediately and Ben lost his, a very nice cutthroat, after a long fight. I had another one on shortly after and, after a little fight, lost him, too. Damn. A few whitefish were caught. A couple small cutthroat, too. But most of the day was spent floating ridiculous dry flies down beautiful runs of water to no avail. The Tetons were shrouded in clouds, showers scattered the valley, and the water was gorgeous; steep runs dropping off into emerald green pools.

Finally, at the end of the day, we started to catch some fish. Ben landed a nice 18" cutthroat, I caught one slightly smaller on a size 18 parachute bwo. Interesting fish - save for the first fish ben hooked into, the fish we caught had very little color to most of their body. The exception were the fins, which had turned a bright red/orange for the fall, and the orange slits on the underside of the gills.

Kind of a disappointing day given our expectations at the start. Would have been nice to have a killer day on Ben's birthday and on such a famous river.

We left and drove down Rt191 to Rock Springs for the evening. "Swine flue" kept us from staying with David. Tomorrow we'll finish the drive to Steamboat and set up shop for the final days of the trip.