Labor Day Fun

For the last couple years I've gone with my in-laws to stay in Island Park. Of course we always go fishing for one of the days and this trip was no different. We started out early and headed down to Ashton to fish the Snake River below the dam. I unwittingly brought wading socks instead of my waders and I found out really quick that that was a mistake. The water was freezing! I fished for a while with no luck so I crossed a bridge to try the other side of the river. I looked off the bridge about half way across and saw about 50 good sized trout. After seeing that I knew what I had to do. Even though my Father-in-law told me I was crazy, I waded out in waste deep water and gave it a go. The only thing that kept my mind off of how cold the water was was the thought of hooking one of those big trout. To bad the fish didn't want to bite. We moved up river closer to the dam to give it one more shot. I started throwing rapalas and finally started having hits and follows. I saw some monsters follow but no commitments. By this time I was a little frustrated and ready to go try a different spot and then finally, FISH ON! This fish made one long hard run for about 10 seconds and snapped my 8 lb test! Between his run and the current, I couldn't keep up with him down the river.

We decided we had had enough of that spot so we headed back to the cabin, ate some lunch and we were off to Henrys lake to try our luck there. The wind was blowing hard and the lake was white capping but we launched my 14 ft tracker anyway. We didn't drive 5 hours to give up easily. Needless to say, I ended up just driving so the others could attempt to fish. The lake beat us and after an hour on the lake, we called it a day. The next day we headed into Yellowstone National Park to check out some of the sites. There we a few that had never seen Mammoth Hot Springs so we headed up the upper loop to see it. We saw a lot of wildlife including a Grizzly bear right off the road. by the time we got to Mammoth Hot Springs, the tempurature had dropped dramatically. We ended up not staying long and headed back. On the way back we noticed in had snowed in the higher elevations and I believe that was the first snow the season. We had a great trip and better than the fishing or the beautiful surroundings was being able to spend time with the family.

One of the many geysers in Yellowstone.

Young Grizzly bear.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Traffic Jam

First snow of the season???

Ashton Dam