Last year I spent a fair amount of time reading maps looking for public access to the Teton River between the old Teton Dam Site and Hog Hollow, which is just a few miles south and east of St. Anthony. Finally found a road which looked like it was a county road that went to the edge of the bluffs above the river. Scouted it one day last summer, but never got back to actually fish the area - until today.

Standing on the bluff above the river gave me a great view of a large flat ( some of my friends refer to it as "frog water" ) just downstream of the parking area. Too far off to see much with the naked eye, but with a pair of ten power binoculars, I could actually see cutthroat rising to take naturals, on the far side of the river, of course. There was a pretty good pod working a small area, and several of the fish were large. My guess is that they were in the mid to upper teens in length. Could actually see them coming to the natural from several feet down and away - that was pretty cool.

Made my way down from the bluff on a section that was steep but provided decent footing. Walked upstream through some mixed foliage - trees, brush, thistles, grass - until I found a spot that looked promising. A good sized hole that had some depth to it. Rigged up a double nymph rig with a weighted size 10 prince nymph trailing a weighted size 6 stonefly nymph under an indicator.



First fish was a medium size whitefish.



Next up was a 15" cutthroat.



Over the next hour, I landed a small rainbow and another six whitefish. Two of the whitefish were foul hooked, but, as I like to say, "You have to do a lot of things right to foul hook a whitefish." To the best of my knowledge, there are the only cutts, bows and whitefish in the Teton - so I labeled the spot Grandslam Hole. One large whitefish took the stonefly nymph. All the other fish took ( or got took by ) the prince nymph. It seems the curse of the prince nymph that I've had for ages may be gone for good ??

Worked upstream a way, sometimes wading and sometimes walking through the brush and trees, which at times took me quite a way from the water. Fished a few places with no results. Found another huge flat, but there were very few rising fish, and the rises were sporadic and too far out to reach from wadeable water.

Did notice a fair number of large caddis, and managed to capture one. A Teton River October Caddis. Took a couple macro pics for my album.

The foliage has started to turn - not all, but lots of it is already close to peak color.

The access I found and used today accesses almost a mile of river. Unfortunately, it doesn't access the best water, which was the big flat downstream of where I parked, and a lot of the water it does access is either not all that good or not wadeable / fishable.

Will likely give it another try one of these days. Not a high priority. Although with a toon ...

Click on the photo for a few more scenes of the river and the foliage, and a couple pics of October Caddis.