Time: 11:30AM – 5:00PM
Location: About a mile upstream from Little Hole
Fish Landed: 4
Green River 09/15/2013 Photo Album
Fire Burn Area Along Road to Little Hole on Sunday Morning
I ate a farmer’s breakfast at the restaurant at Flaming Gorge Resort and then checked out and found a campsite at the Firefighter Memorial Campground just down the road. Site 17 was available and featured a nice flat tent pad. It began to rain lightly as I quickly put up the tent and then prepared a lunch while dodging raindrops. It looked pretty black so I decided to drive to Little Hole and wait out the rain there where I planned to fish. Little Hole is a boat launch and take out point eight miles below the dam. Many guides float from the dam to Little Hole and take out there, and others launch at Little Hole and take out further down the river. The river spreads out in a wide riffle above the boat launch and at some flow levels it is possible to wade to the south bank and then walk upstream and fish on that side. Several years ago Steve Supple and I did this and had a decent amount of success.
Amazingly as I drove along the paved road that leads to Little Hole the sky brightened, the sun appeared, and it actually felt warm. There was fire damage in this area near Dutch John and the landscape looked as bleak as that in the vicinity of Himes Peak along the White River. I stopped at the overlook above the boat launch at Little Hole and took a panorama shot of the river from high above. Once again I used my Senior Pass to cover the daily use fee and quickly pulled on my waders and prepared for a day of fishing. Several fishermen were crossing in the wide riffle arm in arm, but I decided I didn’t want to risk getting wet as I was solo and didn’t have an accompanying partner. Just as I was ready to depart, I noticed some heavy dark clouds just over the hill on the other side of the river, so I quickly removed my front and backpack and slid on my raincoat. Now I was ready for anything except what actually happened. I walked a short distance from the car and the skies opened. Buckets of rain dumped from the dark cloud so I quickly raced to a picnic table with a roof overhead and sat on the table to escape the blowing rain.
Overlook of Green River at Little Hole
This continued for 10-15 minutes and then the rain abated a bit so I decided to continue on my way to the Little Hole Trail. As the rain slackened a myriad of poorly dressed fishermen drenched from head to toe emerged from the river and headed to their cars. I found the entrance to the Little Hole Trail that followed the north shore of the river all the way to the dam and began hiking in the muddy trough. It reminded me of my hike along the South Fork except that this soil was red instead of black. After I’d hiked ten minutes or so, the intensity of the rain increased again, and I found a spot next to a high vertical wall where the upper portion angled out over my head and blocked the rain.I waited here another ten minutes and then the rain slowed to a drizzle and I continued on my way. Another fisherman just above me used this break in the storm to return to the parking lot as he was wearing a fleece top under his waders. He looked quite wet and chilled and told me his raincoat was in his truck.
Dave Waited Out Rain Where Fly Rod Leans
On I marched in the by now light drizzle until it was 11:30 and I decided to cut down to the water and begin my fishing day. Amazingly that would prove to be the last of the rain and the skies gradually brightened so that the afternoon turned into a delightful sunny day. I decided to begin my quest for Green River fish with a Chernobyl ant and a brown bead midge larva. These two flies worked will on a previous September trip with David Luther when we drifted the river, so why wouldn’t they work today? It didn’t take long before I landed a nine inch brown on the Chernobyl ant. The size was disappointing after seeing great numbers of large fish, but it was a start.
Unfortunately that was the end of the action for quite awhile despite the sky clearing and the wind picking up.Since I began fishing at 11:30 I waited until 12:30 to pull out my lunch and the timing seemed appropriate since I wasn’t experiencing any action. After lunch I was once again tired of struggling to see the low riding Chernobyl so I converted to a yellow Letort hopper with a beadhead hares ear. Later I added an orange scud below the hares ear as I’d seen several fish nosing about in the aquatic weeds on Saturday, and I assumed they were knocking scuds loose and consuming them.
With these three flies now in action I came upon a stretch of faster water that reminded me of the Arkansas River so I decided to approach it in the same manner and made upstream casts into pockets, along current seams and to moderate depth riffles. I kept the line off the water to prevent drag and also made some downstream drifts with stack mends. It was while executing these techniques that I tossed the flies into the center of an eight foot wide pocket between two faster runs. Much to my surprise I saw a swirl for the hopper so I set the hook, but as the fish began to battle it seemed that the underwater force was connected to one of the lower flies. At this point I began to wonder if the fish was foul hooked but it fought fairly normally so it seemed to be hooked somewhere in or near the mouth. The fish initially ripped out line and then I brought it back across from my position and it made a major move downstream. I gave it line but when it got in heavy current, I applied pressure to bring it back toward shore, and bling, the flies came free and shot back over me and wrapped around the line of another fisherman!
Where did he come from? I asked myself this question as he emerged out of nowhere at the most inopportune time. I waded over to the victim of my fishing misfortune and apologized for cutting into his space but he was very nice about it and said he was back away from the stream working on his line and was about to say something when I hooked the fish and didn’t want to break my concentration. He was quite a gentleman and after he unwrapped my line I continued to apologize and moved upstream quite a ways to give him adequate space to cover the water.
When I re-entered the river I was perhaps half way through the long stretch of faster water and on one of my drifts I felt a bit of weight as I lifted to recast, but in a split second the fish was off and I saw the outline of a nice brown drifting back downstream. After this near miss another long dry spell developed, and I grew weary of constantly dabbing and drying the Letort so I exchanged it for a yellow pool toy. I was skeptical this would produce and assumed it was serving as a buoyant indicator for the trailing beadhead hares ear.
It was however quite windy and there was a lot of streamside vegetation that certainly harbored grasshoppers so it wasn’t unreasonable to expect that the yellow hopper could represent a food source that was quite prevalent in this area. It wasn’t long until I cast the pool toy to the top of a wide slot and a nose appeared and I set the hook and was attached to a head shaking and diving brown trout. When I finally netted the big boy and stretched it across my net it measured 16 inches. What a thrill to catch a fat brown on my pool toy creation!
16-17″ Brown Was Prize Catch on Sunday
This episode prompted me to continue on with renewed optimism and in a shallow side channel with a thick amount of aquatic weeds I spotted two or three fish. I was back in sight fishing mode similar to Saturday, but my hopper/dropper had no impact other than to cause the fish to move after several casts. But as I scanned the channel and moved on a bit I spotted another fish closer to where the water branched off from the main river. I stripped out line and measured the distance with a couple false casts off to the side and then shot a cast toward the sighted fish. The hopper dropped just above the nose of the fish and then ever so slowly the fish finned over to the pool toy and gobbled it in! This fish thrashed for an instant and then allowed me to strip it in to the net almost as if it had been through this numerous times and just wished to get the game over with. Once I examined the rainbow in my net I realized that it appeared to be blind in one eye and wasn’t in prime shape.
Close Up of the Classic Drift Boat
In the next half hour I landed one more eleven inch brown that snatched the hares ear on a downstream swing but that was all the action before 5 o’clock rolled around and I made the 30 minute hike back to the parking lot and the Santa Fe. When I returned to the campsite I discovered that the tent had dried in the afternoon after the heavy morning rain and I enjoyed a peaceful night of rest with cooler temperatures prevailing. On Monday morning I packed up the tent and decided to make the 6.5 drive back to Denver and skip another day of fishing on the Green River. It was an interesting couple days, but much slower action than I was used to.
Site No. 17 at Firefighter Memorial Campground