A lovely snake river fine-spotted cutthroat...
Based on the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's latest Angler Newsletter (click here), electroshocking on the mile produced a rainbow trout population of 2,203 fish/mile, many of which fell into our average size for fish caught. The lack of brown trout that we caught wasn't surprising, as their numbers had declined roughly 53% in two years to 599 fish/mile. Surprising, was the number of Snake River cutthroat that we managed in correlation to their numbers in the river. According to the latest survey results, cutthroat account for roughly 3% of the entire river's population of fish at 80 fish/mile. The trout population survey reminded me of what happened to most eastern waters as our native brook trout could not openly compete with the non-native brown and rainbow trout.
On one particular stretch of the "mile" we stumbled upon a pod of snake river cutthroats and did exceptionally well. We managed to land about a half dozen fish from 14-18" and missed several others. Even a group of anglers across from us caught a nice cutthroat. Leaving this section of river that seemed to be devoid of rainbows and browns, we thought we wouldn't catch another cutty. However, we managed to find several more on three different sections of the river.
Later on in the trip, we stopped at a local fly shop to ask a few questions about upcoming water. We ended up talking about the "Mile" and the resident shop owner tried to tell us that we didn't catch any snake river cutthroat out of that river. He thought that we were probably mistaking them with cutbows. Based on that conversation and the statistics, I think we were pretty lucky to catch as many cutthroat as we did. Of course, we weren't complaining.
The grasshoppers were around but it wasn't "hopper time" just yet. We only managed a few trout on hoppers when we were expecting many more...
New "dry dropper" tool of choice...
River refrigerator....
Mosquito armor...
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