Tom Claycomb

Periodically someone will ask me what is my favorite outdoor activity. I love pretty much anything outdoors. Sure, I have a few favorite activities but still, I love it all. But backcountry flyfishing rates right up near the top of the pile.

So with that said, I flew home on a Friday and was excited to head up backpacking. At the last minute, though, I got an invitation to go visit the River Retreat Lodge over in Swan Valley, Idaho. We’d hike up in the high-country, flyfishing as well as drifting the South Fork of the Snake River. OK, time for a fast plan revision.

I unpacked/repacked, submitted a couple of articles right fast and was loaded up and heading over to Eastern Idaho on a Monday. I’ve been running like crazy so it was a nice peaceful drive over.

Driving over to Swan Valley from Idaho Falls I’d forgotten what huge wheat fields they have in Eastern Idaho. They are massive. I’ve moose hunted a lot 30 to 50 miles north of Swan Valley but had never actually been to Swan Valley. I soon arrived at the lodge, unloaded into my room and the owners, John and Liz Douville, and I met and talked about our strategies, etc.

The next morning Liz whipped out an awesome breakfast and then we loaded up into John’s pickup for the short drive to the trailhead which is literally 3 to 5 miles from the River Retreat Lodge. We parked at the trailhead, threw on our packs and hit the trail.

There were a few vehicles at the trailhead but luckily it turned up that they were all little yuppies and we were the only fishermen.

Obviously, the trail was uphill but it was a super gradual incline and not a hard hike at all.

A little less than two hours up the trail there was a unique rock format ion that resembled a picnic table and bench. We sat down for a few seconds and grabbed a drink of water.

For hikes like this I always take a bottle of water but I also throw in an Aquamira filtered water bottle. That saves me from carrying a gallon of water. Just scoop water out of the river and drink away. Filtered water bottles are a life saver!

We were hiking up a river and after a couple of hours we hit a beautiful high mountain lake. We took a few pics and then kept hiking. After passing the lake it turned into a flatter meadow. Well, I say meadow but it was choked out by a thick growth of willows.

I’ve crawled through thick willow-covered river bottoms like this before a million times and sometimes you get so hung up that you don’t think that you’ll ever get out. If you broke a leg, they’d never find the body! And many times after getting into the river the sides are so thick that you can’t even fish.

John picked a spot that he thought we could break through to the river. Surprisingly, in a short amount of time we were at the river and stringing up our flyrods. John had told me that over the course of the week we’d be hanging some cutthroats up to 20 inches so I’d taken my 5-weight Loomis which could handle them.

We had stumbled in right on a nice hole. The water was a unique color. It was grey-blue and looked like glacial water. Within a few minutes we both had netted a couple of 12- to 13-inch cutthroats. To me, anything over 12 inches is a nice cutthroat and 13 inches and above are beautifully colored. I’ve never netted a cutthroat over 19 inches so I was excited to maybe have a chance to do so.

Wow! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a river with a better series of holes. There was one very fishable hole after another. We hop-skipped fishing like this all the way up the stream.

From the trail looking down you’d never have known that there was this many awesome holes. From the trail it looked like an overgrown river bottom in need of a truckload of beavers to clean it out. But once you broke through the brush to the river it was clear and easy to fish.

Uggh, I didn’t get any good fishing pics that day. Wanted to get a pic of John with his first fish but he said we’d get a lot more and bigger fish and released it. Since it was within the first five minutes of starting, no biggee. But as luck would have it, the first two cutthroats we caught turned out to be the largest that we netted.

We had a great time fishing and it seemed like in no time at all John said we’d better head back to the lodge since dinner was being served at 8 p.m. Had time really passed that fast?

Remember at the first of this article I said that sometimes when flyfishing I get down in a thick river bottom and wonder if I’ll ever be seen again by anything other than a hungry bear? Well, that about happened to John.

Sometimes you’ll be walking along a tall grassy bank and beavers will have a hole drilled down to one of their underlying tunnels. The hole will be 14 inches in diameter, the perfect size for your foot to fall in.

Well, as we were following along on the river bank hunting for a way to get back up to the trail John fell down into one of those holes. Luckily he didn’t break a leg or twist his knee out of joint. He was soon out of the hole and we were on the trail back to the lodge.

Next column we’ll talk about drifting the South Fork of the Snake.