mike doughty
01-16-2006, 04:21 PM
Well i had been trying to decide whether to fish the big lost or the big wood rivers in idaho and after a week of trying to get some sort of reports from fly shops in the area and couldn't i decided to drive to mackay idaho and fish the big lost, hoping that it wasn't frozen over. I got on the road as soon as the seahawks game was over and drove the 240 miles to mackay. I got into town at around 10pm and got the last room left in town, had there not been any rooms left then i would have had to back track in the storm about 25 miles to the nearest town. anyways i stayed at the wagon wheel motel, i had tried to get someone to take the trip with me but as it turns out it's a good thing nobody could go because the room only had one bed and i wasn't going to share. if anybody ever decides to go there this is your best lodging option in town, the rooms had a full kitchen including microwave and had i known that i would have stocked up on tv dinners to save some money. sunday morning i got up to blowing snow, freezing temps. and high winds, fricking perfect. there is a campground about 3 miles down the road from the motel and that is where i decided to fish first, spent the first few hours of the morning nymphing without touching or seeing a fish, thinking that this is pretty standard for my last 1/2 dozen outings or so. around 11am i decided i would drive up to below mackay dam and see if i could maybe get some protection from the wind, nope not a chance. still nymphing and trying a variety of small midges and baetis patterns decided i would throw on a soft hackle since nothing else was working, nymphed it through a drift and at the end of it slowly stripped it back. the stripping was what was working, first couple of strips and fish on and then lost. i then decided that nymphing was out and stripping soft hackles was in. i got into a handful of fish while landed a couple of them and then after i was cold enough i decided i would head back to town, warm up and get something to eat before heading out again. after lunch i went back to my room and geared up my other rod with a sinking line and a small olive egg sucking leech to hopefully maybe pull something bigger from the bottom of the pools. unfortunately the size of the fish stayed basically the same rnaging from 11 - 15"'s, all rainbows. stripping the soft hackles up top was good but the leech toward the bottom was even more productive. all in all i would guess around 40-50 hooked with maybe 20 of those landed, all after lunch except the 3 that i caugfth this morning. got up this morning and the wind had died down some but it was about 20 degrees colder. when i left the motel the thermometer read 3 degrees and my car had a little trouble starting. i fished for about an hour this morning until i couldn't feel my fingers anymore and decided that the weekend was good enough and it was time to go. had the weather been a little warmer i would have stayed a little longer but, the hell with it. also yesterday at the end of my day i saw some people using spinning gear in the hole above me where i had already fished and decided that on the way out i would see if i could be a jerk and outfish the spin guys. they were fishing the top of the hole so i fished the bottom of it, it is plenty big for all of us, i made 3 casts and landed 3 fish then left. made me feel good. i didn't take much fish pictures because i can only take so many pictures of 13" fish that all look roughly the same. i plan on taking the same trip in march before they close the river, i was told by the owner of the fly shop that march has a great baetis hatch the flows are a lot better, they are 70cfs right now, and they routinely pull out 3 to 4 pounders from the river, also the dry fly fishing is supposed to be outstanding.