June 25, 2009 Fishing Report Trout & Salmon Fishing
Fishing is just starting to turn on in our area as the water begins to drop from a long month of rain and high water. Salmon Flies are abundant, as are many other hatches and the fish are looking up and in places where the water is a bit slower they are hitting some pretty large patterns!
Fishing on the rivers and streams should just get better as many of the tributaries are clearing up and the rivers are dropping daily. Look to the softer water along the edges, the seam lines with tributary streams and the holes for the best chance of catching fish. Lake fishing in valley lakes should be decent with many of the lakes still quite high. Look to the inlet and outlet areas for better fishing. Many High mountain lakes are still frozen over but, again outlets and inlets might fish well if you can get to the lakes over snow. Right now, 8200 to 8500 feet seems to be about the snow level for the spring melt.
Idaho Fish and Game has done some stocking in many of the ponds and lakes and just started stocking the upper Main Salmon this past week.
SALMON update: Salmon season opened June 20. If you didn’t know it, last year was our first Salmon season in over 30 years. It opened on June 19 and ended in late July. The numbers so far are close to last years and we should have a good season all the way from Salmon upstream to just below the Sawtooth Fish Hatchery above Stanley. More Chinook and Sockeye came back upriver last summer and fall than have been seen in many, many years. So far this summer, the fish are, for the most part still downstream of us. We have hopes they will be in our area in the next week or two so keep your fingers crossed and look for updates as they arrive.
General Information
Many of the fish we catch in our area are Westslope Cutthroat, native Rainbow trout and Bull Trout. These fish are native, natural fish and must be released. If you do not practice catch and release and prefer to keep fish, there are rainbows with missing adipose fins which can be kept. If you are fishing the Main Salmon River, please be sure to check the adipose fin and if the fish has one and is not a Mountain Whitefish or Brook trout, it must be released. Please handle it carefully, practice good catch and release techniques and let it go to catch another day. Consider fishing only with a single barbless hook to increase survival rates of the native fish and don’t keep the fish out of the water for over 20 seconds. Hatchery stocked, catch and keep rainbow trout will be missing the adipose fin. Middle Fork tributaries are CATCH & RELEASE only.
Check the regulation book for exceptions and remember that many fish are protected and cannot be kept. The regulation book tells what can be kept and how to tell the difference.
Courtesy of Sawtooth Fishing Guides: (208)774-8768 or info@sawtoothfishingguides.com
