June 19, 2013
How 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.
I 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.
The 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?
We 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!
Despite 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.
I was wondering how fishing was at Ririe, perhaps I should skip it this year.