For the past four years, I've been dreaming of chasing after bull trout in the middle of winter. I spent 48 hours swinging flies in hopes of finding where bull trout tend to winter! The drive up was incredibly dangerous, navigating roads that hardly get driven on in the winter and taking backcountry routes into untouched waters. We actually popped a tire on the way in, almost leaving us in an extremely dangerous situation.
The first day was rough—freezing conditions caused massive chunks of ice to float down the river, making it impossible to fish, so we went into town to fix the popped tire and replace the spare. On the way down to town, the ice disappeared, so we fished this water. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it was good enough.
We spent the first six hours of the day with only a little light to fish in the water as it was. We didn’t catch anything... defeated, but still hopeful, we returned to camp with fresh new tires. We drove back upstream, hoping the ice had melted and that we could find a new camp spot for the freezing night ahead. To our luck, the ice was gone!
The last hour of fishing was awesome. I was lucky enough to hook into some huge cutthroat-rainbow trout hybrids (cutbows) on my streamer. Now I was wishing we had the whole day to fish this water... but the sun went down, and we enjoyed tacos over the fire with a cold drink.
The next morning, we were woken up to a surprise: the river was still clear of ice. Only a few casts in, I hooked and landed a beautiful westslope cutthroat trout, then kept swinging and swinging, hoping to see a bull trout! The fishing was slow, and we only landed that one fish for the entirety of the day. We walked the river for hours—run after bend, after deep pool, after riffle—nothing.
I explored miles upstream and came across what looked like a perfect run to swing my streamers through. At this point, I was losing all confidence that we were going to find a bull trout on this trip! After a dozen or so casts, mid-swing, my rod starts to bang, thrashing with head shakes. I instantly knew I had hooked a nice fish! My heart was pounding, and the rod was bent as I kept side tension to reel in the fish. It rolled on the surface, and I saw the flash of a bright yellow belly and an olive-green body. I knew I had hooked the bull trout I was after.
I netted the fish and, in a state of shock, landed the fish I had been dreaming of! It was over 20 inches long, in the depths of winter, in the mountains of Idaho. The fish I’d dreamt of was safely released back into the cold mountain river!
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