A Day of fishing

Trip Start Aug 30, 2008

Trip End Sep 13, 2008

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Flag of United States Jackson, Wyoming, United States
Thursday, September 11, 2008

I did not sleep very well last night so I lay awake in the tent listening to the male elk bugling. Every fall the bull elk vie for the female elk affections. They start the bugling and fighting for their harem. We wanted to get up at 7 am and try to get to Lake Solitude. We broke camp and went to the ranger's station at Jenny Lake. The dark clouds hung heavy over the Teton range and especially through Cascade Canyon. I asked the Ranger about the weather and she said, "plan on getting wet". If we made the trip to Lake Solitude today we would not be able to see much due to the rain and the clouds. Instead we decided to get our Wyoming fishing license and do some fishing. We tried several places along the Gros Ventre River and below the Jackson Lake Dam but did not have any luck. It was raining the entire time. Our first fishing spot was a 1/4 mile downstream on Snake River from the Wilson road bridge. On my 3rd or 4th cast, I got a hit. It was an encouraging site, a pair of glasses. We stayed for another 15 minutes without pulling out the glass case, so, we left

Rain over Cacade Canyon

. On the cols Gros Ventre River, our luck was no better and we decided to head up to the Jackson Dam. Again, no luck. However, on our way to the dam we noticed some slow moving water about 3/4 - 1 mile downstream. We decided to check it out. Once at this area we loaded our gear and headed to the river. On the way we noticed a familiar sign, "bear activity area". Oh oh, we kept our heads up looking for any rustling of the bushes or snorting sounds. When we got to the river, I picked a spot and Kevin another, within minutes we had fish on the line. I, pulled in a nice 14 or 15 inch Rainbow Trout. It was a beautiful fish and quite feisty. I had him in my hands and Mr. Slippery got away from me and stole Kevin's favorite lure. I am surprised he did not make me swim after that fish to retrieve the lure. We both had great luck on this part of the Snake River. All in all, we caught 8 Rainbow Trout and one Brook Trout. We heard the elk bugling and it sounded so close, sure enough a big bull elk appeared in the opening across the river from us. At one fishing spot we noticed ducks quickly flew away about 50 feet from us and Kevin said that something spooked them. Since this is bear territory, Kevin asked me to sing and so I did. He told me that the singing almost scared him away. As much as we hated to, we had to leave because it was getting dark. We hiked back up to the car and noticed that there were quite a few cars parked on the side of the road, usually means some wildlife. We thought it was probably elk which are so abundant in the park. We drove by and asked the Ranger what everyone was looking at and he told us that a Grizzly Bear had just come up from the Snake River uncomfortably close to where we were fishing. That sure does give you reason to pause. We were quite happy we did not met this Grizzly face to face on the Snake River.