The Snowy Snake

I’ve been busy taking winter fishing photos lately to update a segment of my “Four Seasons of the Yellowstone Trout Bum” PowerPoint presentation. My first delivery of this program is Friday January 7th at the Denver Fly Fishing Show. Today I ventured to Wyoming and the Snake River up around the Jackson Lake Dam. I went with friends Mark Kuhn (Milkfish) and Bob (I don’t know Bobs last name). Our weather was absolute crap! It was raining when I left Victor and it did so all the way to Jackson. Even so, we had this planned for several days so off we went.

Surprisingly, up at the dam it was nice. By now the rain turned to snow and it was a true winter wonderland. Dams aren’t usually the most scenic places for winter fishing photography but being that this is in Grand Teton National Park, it’s an exception. It’s absolutely gorgeous in the wintertime and this part of the Snake also provides one of the best winter fishing options in the Yellowstone region.

My presentation covers the calendar year of fishing in and around Yellowstone National Park. Basically, my show includes twelve segments made up of eight to ten photos. Each segment represents some of the best fishing in the Yellowstone area for that month. I simply wanted some photos of it snowing while they rigged up, post holing through deep snow, some casting with a gorgeous backdrop and then a few nice fish. Well, here are the pictures from today. Do you notice we are missing something? The boys got skunked!

I can tease them but I can’t go too far with it. In order to be dedicated to my photography I wisely didn’t even bring a rod. Being that I didn’t fish, I don’t know how tough the fishing really was. What I do know though is that it is unseasonably warm here right now. Our snow is melting at a fast pace. As I’ve mentioned before, when snow melts into the river at a high rate, water temps can plummet and cause the trout to be very lethargic. Unless your fly hits them in the nose it’s hard to get them to eat.

Nonetheless it was a great day out. The scenery was beautiful and the wildlife was plentiful. We’ll try it again soon. . .