Picabo, Idaho. Now I can say that I love woolly buggers. It’s been a long time coming with lots and lots of work but they finally returned the love.
My son, Mike and I fished with John Huber at the Little Wood River a few weeks back. (Just getting around to this post because of computer failure and then I was fishing – surprise!) This river is not one of the more well-known rivers in Idaho, but we thought we had our best chance at catching a few fish while wet wading in the heat of a summer afternoon.
We drove from Picabo Angler through a lava rock and sagebrush desert in the Taylor “Bear Tracks” Williams Recreation Area. Everything looked desolate except the thickly lined banks of the river with willows and wildflowers. We had to be careful of rattlesnakes on the hike down to the river and when we arrived at the banks the river seemed completely dried up.
John knew better, sent me upstream a bit and started me off with some dry flies with which I had no luck. Mike threw some nymphs in some of the deeper holes downstream and found a couple rainbows. With the heat bearing down on us we decided it was not a time for dry flies and so we decided to throw some streamers into the same holes Mike had been fishing. I have fished with streamers several times (Gunnison, Bighorn, etc.) and have never had any luck. With a woolly bugger on, I threw a cast and landed a nice brown. The spell was broken. We worked several holes with streamers and came up with several fish. Not bad for a hot day in August in Central Idaho. Bonus: two days with a grown son all to myself.
