Fishing the Grey, July 2017

The rivers here have finally cleared and retreated back into their banks. This means that fly fishing is in full swing. George and Val asked us if we wanted to fish the Grey and looking at our busy schedule, we readily agreed.

The next day we got off to an early start, eight thirty am, and made the short drive to Alpine, turning up the Grey River Road. The first miles were easy, and thanks to some road work relatively dust free. However, as we continued up the road we drove through clouds of dust as camper after camper pulled by us, heading home from the holiday weekend, (it’s Pioneer Day weekend, a holiday celebrated by the Latter Day Saints).

Reaching one of our favorite spots we saw that the river, while clear was still flowing too fast for us to be able to ford it. The Grey is a beautiful River that has a steep gradient and so shallow water still has enough force to sweep you off your feet!

Still we decided we could fish the edges and tying on our favorite flies we spread out. Casting one of my favorite patterns I set the hook on a small Snake river cut throat. The fish here are all wild, native fish and so we carefully release them.  Moving a bit upstream I caught two more cuts, one of which was an especially nice fish.

I noticed the others had gone back to the truck and so I returned to check on how they had done. No one else had caught anything or even had a fish make a pass! When I told them about my success, they all quickly tied on the same dry fly.

Heading further upstream we moved from spot to spot and everyone caught fish. It’s always a good day when everyone catches fish and it didn’t take long before I heard Renita yell, “Fish on”. By the time I got there she had landed the fish and I quickly took a picture of the fish before she safely released it back into the river

Lunch time found us sitting under a large ponderosa pine and as we ate our lunch, two rafts floated by. The people were throwing large flies and one said that they had caught two nice fish! The large fish run up the river, from the Snake, and so it’s possible to catch a twenty plus inch spawner!

We stopped at two more spots and now it was Val’s turn as she caught three fish in a row. The fish seemed to sense something was wrong with my offerings and they would rise before pulling back from my fly.

While it was frustrating, It really didn’t matter. It was time to return home and we had all caught and released nice fish. Finally, some good fishing!  Clear skies