a size 6 woolly bugger.
It’s always nice getting to see my brothers; it is even nicer when we can get into a fish or two. After a long 6 hour drive from Portland to Boise and a Mother’s day spent grilling and eating S’mores around a campfire, my brothers and I were itching to get out and go do something together.
We decided to go check out a reservoir that we had been to on a few occasions. The next morning, we got all of our gear together and made sure to bring layers – the 60 temperatures up at the reservoir was a big change from the high 80’s we experienced on Mother’s day.
After an hour long drive up past Lucky Peak, we reached one of our favorite fishing holes. We rigged up our fly rods with nymphs and woolly buggers – Kolby would try his hand with some chironomids and Phoenix would try prospecting with streamers. Five minutes into getting Kolby reacquainted with fly fishing, Phoenix was hooked up on a smallmouth bass. The fish jumped and fought well, and was around 12″. 15 minutes later, Phoenix felt another tug on his line. This time it was a better fish and to our surprise, it was a pikeminnow. We landed the fish and got a few pictures before letting him go.
The rest of the day there was little action. In between casts we would stare up and admire the hills debating how long it would take to get up one of them. We couldn’t agree on the gradient and the hiking difficulty of the large hills surrounding us. Once we had enough of fishing (not catching), we decided to put our debate to rest and go hike up one of these. Lucky for us, there was a decently maintained trail headed up one of the hills, right by our parking spot. We walked up the trail until it disappeared, and continued on where it made sense. We gained a few hundred feet of elevation and got a nice view. We talked about how small the car looked from up there and decided to head back down once our path forward was no longer obvious.
Although we only had a couple of fish to the net, I still thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend the day with my brothers. I don’t get to see them as often anymore and it feels like ages since we had gotten to get out and do something like this. Go spend time with your family and seize those opportunities when they are presented; you only get so many of them.
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