Boots Allen picked me up at my house at 9:15 AM. We loaded three days worth of gear and drove to Swan Valley where we met another friend Tom Bie. Boots has been on the blog many times. He’s a 3rd generation fishing guide here in the Tetons. This is a first time on the blog for Tom. He lives in Colorado but back in the 90’s lived in this area and we became friends. Tom is the founder of The Drake Magazine, the fly fishing publication I enjoy most.
From Swan Valley we drove to the lower Snake River where there are a few trout, however mostly smallmouth bass and carp. It’s about a 2.5 hour drive from Victor. This is Boots and my third annual trip here. When we arrived, it was 94° and dead calm. The scorched earth reminded me more of being in Sudan than central Idaho, but it’s been a record breaking summer so far.
All three of us have been on a whirlwind of late. Like me, Tom helped with Fishing for the Fight over the weekend in Pinedale. Boots has guided 17 days in a row. As much as we were looking forward to the first cast, with the heat and the need to catch up over a beer, we kicked back. Before we knew it we got hungry and busted into our New York strips!
At 4 PM we launched Boot’s boat. There was no relief from the heat but it always feels better on water. Our first pursuit was for big smallies along a rocky shoreline we know well. I wasn’t feeling lucky. It wasn’t only the heat that made me less than optimistic, but the Snake was cluttered with floating weeds and also had a green color to it.
We went to work and indeed the water was dead. We were in places where Boots and I have caught a lot of nice smallies but all we got were a couple small ones. And these took 30 minutes to stumble upon. But soon I went tight and it was big. I had a nice carp pick up my heavy streamer.
The hotter it is out and the greener the water, the harder a carp fights. I was using my new Winston Air2 6-weight and the fish had me bent deep. Boots stood steady with the net and after several hard runs I got the fish in. You know I was happy – the first nice carp of the trip!
Fishing was bleak after the common carp. We saw plenty more but all were nestled so deep in weed beds there’s nothing we could do to present a fly to them. We saw enough to keep trying but in the end, it was a nice evening on the water that we ended at around 9:45 PM. We’ll be back at it early in the morning.
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