Since the weather looked pretty "iffy" for our planned trip to the Central Mountains, we put it off for a couple days. As a "filler" I decided to take a look at Palisades Creek. Palisades is a popular hike since the trail leads to a couple mountain lakes which are quite pretty. The lower lake is about four miles from the trailhead, the upper lake another couple miles up, the last mile on a fairly steep grade.

I've fished Palisades about a dozen times over the last five years, excluding last year when the water levels were just too low and the water too warm to do any fishing in these SE Idaho creeks. When I hiked up to the lower lake this time last year, I saw seven moose. There was a cow and her calf and two bulls with full racks in the lake near the shore, and a bit later, three younger cows came ambling by quite close to my viewpoint.

In prior years, I've saved this for a late August / early September venture. This year, since I'm staying closer to home, I decided to give it a go a bit early. In past years the fish here have been a mix of native and wild cutthroat and wild rainbows. Both species usually run in the 8"-12" with a few smaller ones around, and an occasional cutthroat over 12". It is not uncommon to run into other fishermen closer to the trailhead. I like to hike back a way before I start fishing. Hardly ever see anyone fishing after the first mile or so.

This is the view from the first creek crossing, looking upstream.



Eventually, I get to a spot that has always produced any number of bows and cutts.



When the water is a bit lower, there is a fabulous little riffle here, just up from the left edge of the picture. Today, the higher and faster water just kind of obliterated it. I caught a smaller fish on the edge of the fast water on the near side of the creek and had several looks by smaller fish there.

But the real action was at the base of the rock wall on the far side of the creek.



Took ten trout close to the wall in about half an hour. Casting was a bit of challenge, with a lot of foliage to the rear and some difficult currents along the wall, but the Yellow Humph kind of liked it there, and accounted for seven fish. A flying ant did the rest of the damage, after it stopped flying and started drifting.



This cutt was just about the cookie cutter trout for this spot today, except for one which was noticeably larger but was very camera shy. The interesting thing was - all cutthroat, not a single rainbow, here or anywhere else on the creek today.

( Continued )