I gave my team Yellow Dog a pep talk last night. We were sitting solidly in 2nd Place after day one of the two day contest here at the Jackson Hole One Fly. However, I’ve done a few competitions in my day, tournaments aren’t over until they’re over. By the time I was done, all four of us, Tom Bie, Josh Mills and Bryan Gregson and I were ready to fish as hard as we possibly could on the final day to perhaps move into first place.
For the most part, my team drew good beats. There was one less than stellar one however, and I received it. It was South Park Bridge to Prichard on the lower Snake River. The average score here yesterday was 53 points. Terrible!
On this particular stretch of the Snake the regulations for fish killing are loose and catching bonus fish of size is unlikely. So instead of hunting big fish with streamers, I fished a size 16 Parachute Hare’s Ear to catch numerous small trout. My strategy was to collect the 30 fish, the 40 fish and the 50 fish bonus points. Each of these marks adds 50 extra points to your score.
My guide was longtime friend Bill Happersett and my boat opponent was an enjoyable to fish with gentleman, Bill Carpenter. I discussed my game plan with them and both were on board. Bill put on a similar small dry fly and together we went to work.
It was very cold when the start bell went off at 8:30 AM. I was in shorts and it was a mere 29°. But as the sun rose so did the temperatures although it wasn’t until around 11 that I was actually comfortable.
While quality fish weren’t common, baby cutthroats were. We refer to tiny cutties as dinks. Though never easy to get dinks to the boat because the flip off a barbless fly so fast, they were plentiful. With my recent Italy Worlds skills still fresh, I was able to hook and land these fish in less than three seconds flat. It should be known, for a fish to be landed as a 2 pointer, all you need to do is touch the leader.
Catching fish fast like this takes amazing concentration and is very tiring. By noon I had 30 fish landed. This included four small measurables, three 12” and a 13” – nothing to brag about but trust me, on this stretch you measure every fish 12” or over in order to get your eight measurables!
Bill and I continued to do our best to catch a ton of fish. While Bill is a good angler, this weird style of catching every little fish in the river didn’t come naturally. In the end, Bill landed 28 fish, just missing the first numbers bonus threshold. I lucked out and landed 61 and collected all three bonuses. In this mess of fish, I had five measurables – three 12 inchers, a 13 incher and a 15 incher. Bills score was 74 points and mine 395 points. I can’t explain how exhausted I was, but working every muscle for this score was exactly what our team needed.
Photo by Neal Henderson
When I returned to headquarters I met up with the rest of my team. Josh had a fantastic day on the South Fork scoring an incredible 589 points. But Bryan and Tom had tough ones.
But fishing was challenging for most anglers and lucky for us, we held on to our 2nd Place and received the second place trophies at the award ceremony. You all know I wanted first but any trip to the podium is a good competition! First place went to Lip Rippers, all good friends of mine, You can see the full scores from the weekend here.
That’s it for Jackson Hole One Fly 2022. It was another amazing event with a fantastic turnout. Its not official but I heard this year’s event raised record breaking amounts of money that will be used for various river and fish improvements. That’s all for now, however, stay tuned. I’m hanging around Jackson another day and will chase lake trout on fly tomorrow with my good friend Scott Smith.
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