Ririe Reservoir – Bass on the Fly Tourney 2013

by | Jun 22, 2013 | Uncategorized | 1 comment

June 19, 2013

blog-June-19-2013-1-Smallmouth-bassHow hard is it to catch a 12” smallmouth bass on Ririe Reservoir in Idaho?  Evidently very very very hard!  Today was our annual Bass on a Fly Tourney and catching five qualifying 12” bass was extremely difficult.  In fact, not one of the eighteen teams brought in five bass.

 

blog-June-19-2013-2-Ririe-Reservoir-bass-tourneyI fished with Granny and Mark Kuhn (Milkfish).  Milky came over and met at our house at 5 AM.  We packed my Explorer and rolled into Ririe before 7.  We and many of the eighteen teams were ready to rock well before the 8:30 AM start time.  But readiness didn’t matter today.

 

blog-June-19-2013-3-Mark-KuhnThe fishing just flat out stunk.  It wasn’t that we couldn’t catch plenty of smallmouth bass on the fly, they were simply tiny.  We caught twenty smallies, but only three were longer than 10” and none of these hit the 12” mark.

 

At 1 PM a front blew in.  Wind funneled down the canyon lake and gusts blew up to 45 MPH.  It wasn’t only impossible to hold a boat in position for casting, it was flat out dangerous.  Get your drift boat sideways in a gust like that and one of the three foot white capped waves could easily dump you.  Did I mention it poured for an hour also?

 

blog-June-19-2013-4-Bass-n-Fly-TournamentWe took our first blank into the weigh-in after six of these tourneys.  I was disappointed but found numerous others to share the punch.  Out of the eighteen teams more than half were fishless and left early and the winning team won with a mere three smallies.  Congrats to them for getting three in brutal conditions!

 

blog-June-19-2013-5-Ririe-Reservoir-IdahoDespite the beating, I’ll look forward to the Ririe Bass on a Fly Tournament next year.  I love the competition and I love getting together with friends.  My next day on the water will be Friday somewhere in Wyoming.

 

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing

1 Comment

  1. Erik Moncada

    I was wondering how fishing was at Ririe, perhaps I should skip it this year.

Welcome to the Blog of Jeff Currier!

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I started fly fishing at age 7 in the lakes and ponds of New England cutting my teeth on various sunfish, bass, crappie and stocked trout. I went to Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, where I graduated with a Naturalist Degree while I discovered new fishing opportunities for pike, muskellunge, walleyes and various salmonids found in Lake Superior and its tributaries.

From there I headed west to work a few years in the Yellowstone region to simply work as much as most people fish and fish as much as most people work. I did just that, only it lasted over 20 years working at the Jack Dennis Fly Shop in Jackson, WY where I departed in 2009. Now it’s time to work for "The Man", working for myself that is.

I pursue my love to paint fish, lecture on every aspect of fly fishing you can imagine and host a few trips to some of the most exotic places you can think of. My ultimate goal is to catch as many species of fish on fly possible from freshwater to saltwater, throughout the world. I presently have taken over 440 species from over 60 countries!

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