Fishing Report - Blackfoot River

This last Friday, after being rained out of a float trip on Wyoming's Green River, I fished on Idaho's Blackfoot River with my dad. The fishing was amazing and we caught around 30 fish with an average size of 18". I landed the biggest cutthroat that I have ever caught - a 25" - 5lb cutthroat. I was by myself when I landed this fish so the picture doesn't really show the size of this fish. The second picture is of a 22" cutthroat that I caught right before the big one. Here are the pictures for comparison:

25" Cutthroat Trout

22" Cutthroat Trout

Fishing was so good that we were catching multiple trout in the + 20" size in the same run which is pretty rare on the Blackfoot River.

We also lost 15+ fish in the 18-24" range. The trout were really aggressive and when hooked they would take off downstream, jump out of the water, and fight like crazy.

The hot flies for the day were woolly buggers. Black woolly buggers with a peacock hearl, green body or orange body, with some crystal flash in the tail and bead heads were the best flies. Fly sizes ranged from 4-12. There was a huge BWO hatch on so I also caught some smaller fish on a BWO pattern. The bigger fish didn't even look at the BWO's.

Surprisingly we also caught quite a few pure rainbows in the 18-22" size. This is the first year in a long time that we have seen pure rainbows in the Upper Blackfoot River. Here is a picture of one of the rainbows: