Picabo, Idaho

Of all of the iconic Sun Valley, Idaho area places in the fly fishing arena, I think of Picabo at the top of the heap. It has, namely, Silver Creek running through it's backyard.

The prairie landscape is striking in more subtle ways than the mountains to the north. The culture in Picabo is quite different than that of its more upscale close neighbor, Ketchum (think Sun Valley, Idaho), to the north.  Picabo, while absolutely tiny, is an amalgamation of ranchers and farmers and ranch hands and cowboys and even a few fishermen.

HWY 20 near Picabo on any given morning before the sun rises, is active with mainly the ranchers and farmers driving their respective pick-ups to work sites. 

While being very interested in the specific fishing aspects of Silver Creek, I'm also really interested in the periphery of trout streams throughout the world. The periphery to me is the human and landscape aspect near a trout stream that is not necessarily fishing-centric. Farm workers and laborers, cowboys, hunters, Chilean gauchos, shepards and anyone else who may be a stakeholder near a river are examples of the trout stream periphery.

The Queen's Crown & Picabo. Fall 2016

East Oxbow. Silver Creek.

Here's a shot from late yesterday afternoon of Silver Creek. We've had a lot of rain which is really well needed! It has also turned some of the brown back to green which will not last for long. Indian summer though for the rest of the week with highs in Picabo near 60. 

East Oxbow. Silver Creek, Idaho.

Spring Lupine

We're in the midst of our spring-green here. Cool with some rain and hail and even snow for the next few days.

May is a favorite month of mine. Great clouds and it's green and generally a bit warmer and warming and our rivers here are generally too high to fish so I don't feel as though I need to be on the river every day and end up exploring other places I might not otherwise check out. I am off to, for example, the Fall River in Northern California and then the East Cape in Baja, Mexico and then the Oregon Coast over the next three or four weeks.

The image below was my first image with a new camera--Nikon D810--taken today. Like any new tool, there are minor adjustments to make in order for the tool to become virtually invisible much like a pen to the hand of a writer. I have been shooting with the Nikon D3s for the past 5 or so years and upgraded yesterday to the D810.

Why the upgrade? My D3s is essentially lumbering into the mortuary to find its place. The memory card slots are broken. The frame is partially bent from a fall. The grip has fallen off in many places. I want a back-up camera. I'd like to print much higher resolution files (the D810 is a 35mm sensor with 36 mega pixels compared to the faster 12 mega pixel D3s), I am indeed sacrificing speed (ie frames per second and iso in exchange for much higher resolution) but really want a higher resolution file as I am shooting more and more at a relatively low (100-1,600) iso and decided against the Nikon D5. If iso and frames per second were my two priorities than the Nikon D5 would be my choice but that's not my case.

In any event, the image below was my first image taken with the Nikon D810. Shot today near Hailey, Idaho.

Lupine. Hailey, Idaho.

Silver Creek Late Winter

We've been in a very wet weather cycle for about a week now and we're expecting snow tonight and even more snow through Sunday night. Most of that moisture has been rain down in Picabo on the banks of Silver Creek. We are looking at potentially the best water year in quite some time on Silver Creek. 

When I took the image below, two days ago, fish were rising up and down Silver Creek. Temps were in the upper 40's and it was raining lightly...

Silver Creek. Late Winter.