June 13, 2023 - Early spring fishing for native cutthroats

Every spring I visit a certain stream that holds cutthroat trout. Spring is my most challenging season to fish as snow melt and runoff bloat the streams and decrease the amount of  water that I can fish. But there is this one stream that is manageable enough before runoff really gets going.

This stream is on private land. There is a fence around it, but the fence is derelict and in poor repair, and I’ve never seen a no trespassing sign. The adjacent land is well taken care of with a well repaired fence, and no trespassing signs, but not the land in which I access the stream. I do have some reservations about fishing it because it is on private land, but until I see signs of no trespassing, I’ll continue to fish this once or twice a year in the spring time.

The stream is challenging because it’s surrounded by hawthorn trees. These will rip up your waders or any clothing that you’re wearing and they notoriously snag your line and rob you of your flies. Also, there’s a lot of underwater snags, so you end up losing a lot of flies even when you’re very careful.

On this day, the water was a little higher than usual, because the amount of snow melt that we had had but I was still able to pick up some cutthroat and a few brook trout. It's this particular stream where I use a San Ron Worm with great effectiveness. 

I have fish this stream over the years with a variety of different rods from the Daiwa Sagiri 39MC to various 360 cm rods, but I think the rod that is best used here is the Mizuchi. It's the right length, as well as the right flex action to cast the heavy flies that work in the challenging conditions of spring in Idaho.