Henry's Fork of the Snake

The river

The Henry's Fork leaves Henry's Lake and runs 177 km to join the Snake, but almost everything written about it concerns one stretch: the Ranch, between the Osborne Bridge and the confluence with the Buffalo River. Here the river is fed by springs at a near-constant temperature, the weed beds are the structure, and the trout have seen every pattern ever published. Two things follow from that. First, presentation beats pattern. Second, the most productive hours are often when no hatch is on at all.

On this river

The downstream reach cast

On the Ranch you are usually fishing to a fish you can see, 8–12 metres away, in flat water. Stand level with the fish or slightly above, throw the cast downstream of it, and use the reach to lay the leader out to the side so the fly floats down on a slack line. Done properly the fly arrives first and nothing else follows it.

Weed lanes, not open water

The food is in the weed beds; the fish sit in the 40 cm lanes between them. Read the lanes as you would read a run on a freestone river and put the fly in the lane, not on the weed. A fly that touches weed is a fly that is about to drag.

When nothing is hatching

The Ranch's best-kept secret is the blind-fished small nymph in flat water. Use a 4.5-metre leader, 6X, one small bead-head, and watch the point where the leader meets the surface rather than an indicator. Takes are usually a hesitation or a two-centimetre sideways tick.