Wild waters, wild trout, wild fun!!!

[albinotrout]

Well the Raft River Mountains have been calling my name for a while now and so I packed up the family and grabbed the nephew and headed up there for a couple of days. Never been there before so not sure what I would find. Started out late so we got up to Clear Creek Campground around 4 pm. Just enough time to make camp, cook a little dinner and fish clear creek for a little while. Had to try out the new 4 wt 6'6" rod that I picked up this last winter just for small streams. [cool] Clear creek is a nice creek approx 5 feet across in places sometimes wider. Fast moving water due to the steepness of the area. I caught three brookies and a nice pansize rainbow on dry flies. It was now starting to get dark so headed back to camp after teasing the trout for a while.

Day 2:
Now today was what I was loooking forward to. Lots of small creeks in a whole montain range to check out. After breakfast headed to the Raft River on the western edge of the mountain range and Sawtooth NF. The Raft River actually flows on BLM land not in the NF, but hey it was still fun. The Upper Narrows area is where the head waters are for the Raft River. Full of willows and beaver ponds. Looked promising so we stopped and started throwing flies and spinners. I noticed that the small minnows were all willing to chase and play, they were all 1" to 3" in length but nothing else of size. Did get a nice hit from a little larger fish in the faster flowing water. After fighting with the willpws for a little over an hour we started to head east. Stopped at Johnson creek just south of Yost. The creek is about 5 feet across and slower than clear creek. The fish were more skittish here as well. Soon learned how to sneak up on them without sending an all out warning that we were coming. Caught a couple of Yellowstone Cutthroat and another brookie here. I happened to catch the same fish twice. I know this for I had just released it and the fly fell into the stream where I had just released it. This stream brought out the largest fish of the weekend by my nephew. A really nice cutt. All on dry flies. Kept heading west after teasing the trout in Johnson creek for a while. Thought I would check out One Mile creek but found that it was smaller than Johnson creek. Probably could have pulled a trout out of there but decided to keep on going. Day was starting to wane and had three hungry kids and mamatrout already had pulled out her knitting after getting bored of fishing the small streams. Got back to camp at Clear creek with enough time to make dinner and relax in an almost empty campground. After dinner I pulled out the rootbeer and the BB gun and set up some targets for the minnows to shoot at. Stayed one more night then packed up to come home. All in all a great weekend of fishing small streams. Got to do it again soon.[] Didn't have time to hit all the places I wanted to.
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[riverdog]

I like remote places but haven't been there in nearly 10 years. Those streams are as small as as remember. As I recall the Raft River is a tributary to the Snake River and has native yellowstone Cutts. So have you hit the Deep Creek mountains streams yet or possible Jarbidge River on the Nevada/ Idaho border if that is too crowded for you[]?
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[albinotrout]

No haven't been to those places yet, but they would be fun to check out.[sly] Jarbidge would be nice for they have bull trout there. I have been to the Pilot range and talk about small streams with small cutts in them. I found two streams with Lahontans (pure strain) in them. They were fun to play with too. the streams are only about 2 feet across.
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[riverdog]

I hit Jarbidge on the first day of Fall about about 8 years ago with my son. Not to hard to get to just drive 2 hours west on I-80 at 80 mph then turn right and drive 2 hours north on dirt roads at 80 mph[laugh]. OK with the mountain to go up and back down at the end I probably only averaged 60. Plus there are a collection of about 3 houses in a town they call Charleston that will cause you to slow and add a few seconds to the trip. I didn't pass but 2 cars for the first 100 miles. I need to do some more remote trips this summer as last time out I ran into some folks after 5 hours being out and only about a mile from where I quit fishing. Thanks again for the post, now I need to plan what remote place to hit next.
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[Fly_Flicker]

Sounds like you had a good trip. How were the mosquitos - the last time I was up there they ate us alive.
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[albinotrout]

Weren't that bad. It rained a couple of times while we were there. The bad bugs were the biting flies in the upper narrows. We also had insect repellant.
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[hedgesd]

Nice post.
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