St. Anthony, Idaho – The baritone voice resonating through the phone line was warm, unmistakable.
“We’re in for a great baetis hatch,” Mike Lawson drawled. “The bugs are coming off and the fish are really on them.”
But that promise came ahead of the wind, a blow that gathered somewhere off the Pacific Coast, gathered steam over Idaho’s tallest mountains and now threatened various forms of civic mayhem. If a visitor picking his way south on an angling odyssey that began in northwest Montana had cut his engine and hoisted a sail, it might have blown him all the way back to Denver.
“I guess we’ll just have to make the best of it,” Lawson said later from his home a couple of double hauls from the Henry’s Fork River. “But it won’t be as much fun.”
This part of southeast Idaho is famous for four things: potatoes, barley, the Henry’s Fork and Lawson – not necessarily in that order. In fact, most people who pursue trout with the long rod don’t make much distinction between Lawson and the river, so closely are they entwined in the truth and mystery of a stream that looms large in American angling lore.
Lawson and his wife, Sheralee, both are fourth-generation residents of the valley, and the family love affair with the river parallels its rise to popularity as the ultimate angling challenge. Much of that fascination involves the Railroad Ranch section of the upper river, converted 30 years ago to Harriman State Park, where the Lawsons opened their Henry’s Fork Angler shop at Island Park in 1976. They recently sold it, but, as if unwilling to sever some visceral bond, still manage the place.
Forest to farm, the Henry’s Fork courses through canyons, leaps spectacular waterfalls and finally makes a peaceful accommodation with the broad valley that ushers it to the Snake River near Idaho Falls.
During spring, when the upper river remains in an icy grip, Lawson does much of his fishing near home in the reach from Ashton to St. Anthony. He recently purchased 140 acres to save it from the bulldozer, a place where pheasants and wood ducks play hide-and-seek with hawks and the soaring Grand Teton range forms a jagged horizon 40 miles away.
Here, where the river channel breaks apart and regroups like water droplets on a window, an angler can chase the dominant population of brown trout for hours while traveling just a few hundred yards. Idaho’s stream access law, similar to that of Montana, allows wading to the high-water mark and the lower river is open to fishing year-round.
“This is the time of year when there’s so much opportunity, but you run the risk of weather like this,” Lawson shouted above the wind.
As he said this, a sound loud enough to scatter clouds boomed from just upstream. We turned to see a tall cottonwood come crashing through its near neighbors, the first of two such blowdowns we would witness that day. Had the blue-winged olives actually materialized, they might have ended up somewhere in Wyoming.
There will be insects enough later in the season to feed a fish population that seems to be booming throughout. Biologists predict 3,000 trout per mile in the famous Box Canyon, approaching historic levels, a gain of 60 percent in just two seasons.
A Mother’s Day caddis hatch jump-starts the main season, followed by a Memorial Day salmon fly emergence, then the much-anticipated dance of the green drakes and, finally, pale morning duns. Hatches are finished by mid-July on the lower river, but then in full bloom at Harriman Park.
Lawson caught plenty of fish on this windy day, but he had to sink his fly deep beneath the surface to do it. It wasn’t as much fun as it might have been, but a man can’t complain too much when he gets to fish the Henry’s Fork.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
