Fall is Prime Time in Hells Canyon! Trip report on our 4-day fishing trip!

Hanging out around the campfire is one of my favorite things to do on fall float trips. 
I pack in firewood in a dry bag so we have plenty. 

Hi all, 

A week ago, I had the privilege of visiting Hells Canyon once again on a fall fishing trip with a small group of good friends. Even though I've done tons of fall trips in Hells Canyon, I always am awe-struck by the steep, gnarled black cliffs rising from the canyon below Hells Canyon Dam. 

It's truly a magnificent sight to behold on a sunny day. On a rainy day, like we surprisingly had last Thursday, we had jet-black skies threatening overhead, combined with the austere black cliffs of Hells Canyon. My gut was churning big-time. 

Looks like rain! I hate rigging and packing my raft in the rain! But at the beginning of a trip, I've always got a ton of adrenaline pouring through me - a mix of excitement about being on the river again, apprehension about the big rapids in the biggest-scale whitewater experience in Idaho, overstressing about what I forgot or didn't forget in terms of group gear, and now, the weather. Whatever!   

We caught lots of nice small-mouth bass, all catch and release. Fun fighters! 

We got the boats loaded before the rain hit, and then we sat out the first burst of rain under a shelter at the put-in. And then it let up for a few hours. 

Time to start floating and fishing! My friends Jim Acee and Bruce Reichert were in the front of my raft, and Acee was ready to slay the bass and trout with two fishing poles in hand and all of the trusty spin-cast lures that work in Hells Canyon. Bruce was spin-fishing for the first time in decades since he normally fly fishes at high mountain lakes. But within minutes, both of them had fish on! 

Very slowly, I worked the eddies alongside the river, and the boys caught a number of small-mouth bass. Very few trout! 

In less than 4 miles, we made camp on this cool sand bar and natural cove in the cliffs on river right. Looking up at the sky, I could see a few patches of blue, but it looked mostly dark and more rain imminent. We put up my big-ass 16x20 foot tarp, set up our kitchen stuff under that, and we were ready to sip cocktails and enjoy the scenery, rain or no rain. 

My tarp is big enough to cover the kitchen area, plus lawn chairs!  

As many Idaho boaters know, fall river trips are a great way to enjoy cooler weather, fall colors, as well as fishing and bird hunting along the way, side-hikes, etc. Hells Canyon is one of my top picks because road access is relatively easy from Boise (5-hour drive), it's got more water flow (7,000-11,000 cfs) than other Idaho rivers this time of year, and the fishing is very consistent and pretty amazing, considering the variety of fish in the Snake River. 

People fish for rainbow trout, small-mouth bass, and sturgeon, plus steelhead are running now, and fall Chinook salmon also are running now. If you don't have your own raft, you can go with a Hells Canyon outfitter or book a jet boat ride with Hells Canyon Adventures, Hammer Down River Excursions, Kilgore Outfitters and more. See Riggins Chamber or IOGA for a full list of outfitters.

The logistics for Hells Canyon are as follows: Put in a Hells Canyon Dam and float to Pittsburg Landing, a distance of about 35 miles. This trip is easily doable in three or four days. My advice: Take as much time as possible. After Labor Day, only self-issue permits are required, available at the put-in. Shuttles can be arranged through Scotty's gas station in Pine, Oregon for $225 cash. They do a marvelous job!

Below Sheep Creek ... sturgeon road ahead! 

On Day 2, I had Bruce oar the raft and I fished with Jim in the bow. The fishing was hot! We hooked a ton of bass throughout the day. We cast against the black canyon cliffs into these nifty little coves and small pools, and bam! Fish on! We released all of the bass because we had Bruce's famous chicken piccata to look forward to for dinner! Plus pineapple upsidedown cake in the Dutch oven.

But first, we ran Wild Sheep Rapids, the first big Class 4 drop at about Mile 8. I went up on the mountainside to scout the big rapid, and at 7,000+ cfs, the best route looked like the typical run for this time of year. You enter on the left-center side of this massive rapids, and then row super hard to the right-center of the rapids, and hit a narrow slot as a giant left lateral wave merges with a giant right lateral wave.

We saw a group of kayakers and one raft approach, and the lead kayaker was barking orders to the other kayakers and they didn't scout. Well, the lead kayaker made the right move, and the rest of the kayakers got absolutely slammed by a wall of 12-foot left lateral waves on the left-center side of the rapids. That was interesting to watch! Long swims for those dudes. 

Bruce and Jim 

But I hit the slot, and Kristin Nelson nailed the run as well in our group, so we were homefree to make our next camp and enjoy Bruce's chicken piccata. This time around, Bruce moisturized his dried morels with white wine, and that really added a tasty zip to those luscious shrooms! 

Third night camp. Rosy clouds hint of the sunset to come.

The next day, we needed to make some tracks. We floated through all of the whitewater rapids without a problem, caught more bass, and lunched at Johnson Bar. We ended up at Caribou Creek camp that night and had chili from Kristin and her husband, John Blanchard. The sun came out with a vengeance that afternoon, to the point where I had to swim to cool off! Quite the contrast to the start of our trip. 

Anyway, I highly recommend a fall trip in Hells Canyon. 

Here are a few other options for fall trips:     

• Lower Salmon Canyon - Float from Hammer Creek to Heller Bar or arrange for a jet boat shuttle to Pittsburg Landing from the mouth of the Salmon. It's almost 50 miles from Hammer Creek to the mouth of the Salmon, and the river is running very low, so allow for plenty of time to do your float. Fishing is limited to small-mouth bass and steelhead in this section. 
• Salmon River near Riggins - If you don't have time to do a longer trip, you could put in at Carey Creek or Vinegar Creek and float down to Riggins while fishing for steelhead and hunting chukars. 
• South Fork Snake River - Put in at Palisades Dam for the long version of the float or at Swan Valley and float to the takeout at Heise. The South Fork Lodge in Swan Valley does shuttles. Check with the experts on what kinds of flies the fish are taking. The cuts on the South Fork get fished very hard by a steady stream of outfitters every day. By this time of year, it's more locals than outfitters. Here's a blog post I did on the South Fork two years ago. 

Fall trips provide great opportunities to see wildlife.
We've seen multiple black bears in Hells Canyon. 

Steve talks about his latest outdoor adventures with Ken and Melissa on 94.9 FM The River every Friday morning at about 7:40 a.m. Please tune in! 

Late-season river trips in Idaho offer solitude, great fishing

Greg and Jan 20 years later in the grotto with their wedding T-shirts on ...

Parrott's Grotto

The water gets deeper and swifter in the Impassible Canyon

Fish on!

The snag that almost landed on Greg

Whew!

Yee-haw! Hello Middle Fork!

Final approach to Indian Creek ... really excited now

Taking off for the Middle Fork, banking by the Sawtooth Mountains

Ready to roll at 7:45 a.m. at the Stanley airstrip with all of our gear

Hi all,

Idaho's blessed with world-class rivers, and because of their popularity, it's tough to get a permit in the middle of the summer. But in the fall, after Labor Day weekend, it's easy to grab a launch permit -- if one is required at all -- and you can enjoy the September weather, solitude and great fishing.

Some friends of mine got married 20 years ago in Parrott's grotto on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. We had hoped to do a wedding reunion trip in July, but no one in our group drew a permit from the lottery system, so we planned a September trip instead. You just have to hang loose and wait for the permits to become available on the www.recreation.gov web site, and snag one.

The hard part is finding a date that works for working people with kids in September. You've got to find someone to supervise the kids so they can stay in school -- that can be a tough one -- get time off work, etc. Plus, there might be other complications. So even though we had 18 people on the wedding party trip, our reunion trip consisted of just four people -- the honored guests, Greg Harley and Jan Sutter, my partner Wendy and me. That's cool ... I love small groups ... it makes things SO much simpler.

Considering all of the fall multi-day trip options in Idaho, the Middle Fork and the Main Salmon rivers involve the most logistics and expense. Floating Hells Canyon near Cambridge, the Lower Salmon Gorge near Whitebird or the South Fork of the Snake River east of Idaho Falls are easier to pull off, and no advance reservations are required. You just fill out a self-issue permit at the boat launch, arrange for a vehicle shuttle and go.

Besides the hassle of getting an advance permit on the Middle Fork, you also need to decide whether you're going to fly into Indian Creek (25 miles downriver to avoid low water and lots of rocks), and then arrange for a vehicle shuttle ($225 from Stanley to the takeout). We choose to fly into Indian Creek with McCall Air Taxi from Stanley to make things easier for our group. Most of the private groups we saw on the river started from the top, at Boundary Creek, because the water was a little higher this year (1.8 feet on the gauge). They ran small boats and packed lightly. One nimble group from Hailey floated in self-support inflatable kayaks backpack-style with no rafts to carry camp gear.

Admittedly, we chose the deluxe route. We wanted to eat like kings and queens on the wedding reunion trip (lots of Dutch oven meals), we packed champagne for the grotto, and the rafts allowed us to bring plenty of warm clothes for hanging out in the evenings and mornings.

(FYI - I've run the Middle Fork many times in late season at 1.8 feet or less without incident, but you have to focus like a laser beam on your line through rock-choked shallow areas, and be ready to leap out of the boat and push off rocks, which can lead to injuries. A friend of mine floated the Middle Fork the week before we went this year, and his boatmen were so weak and inexperienced, they just gave up on trying to steer around rocks after a while, and just drifted until they got stuck. They were totally exhausted by the time they reached Indian Creek.)

Back to the weather ... the first couple of days, the mornings were downright chilly, with temperatures just above freezing before sunrise. And then, when the sun popped over the high mountains guarding the river canyon, it warmed up in a hurry. There's at least a 30-degree temperature swing between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. By noon, the temperatures were in the 80s, and the fish were biting on dry flies. Wa-hoo!

I have to mention one bone-chilling incident we experienced at Marble Creek Camp on Day 1. A 60-foot dead snag fell over in the afternoon after we reached camp and almost landed on Greg, who was hanging out in his lawn chair, reading on his Kindle. He was looking up at the tree and said to Wendy, "Hey, did you see that widowmaker up there?" Seconds later, the tree came crashing down, and Greg was quick enough to leap out the way!

A Shoshone-Bannock woman had given us a blessing before we launched at Indian Creek. Let me tell you, we all felt that her blessing may have made a difference, and we certainly felt blessed after that incident. The tree could have injured Greg or worse, and it could have landed on our camp table, wrecked dry boxes, etc. We were lucky!

On our last full day on the river, we pulled into Parrott's Cabin at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. We hiked up to the hidden grotto with the champagne and felt the mist of the tiny waterfall cascading over the rocks and into the cavern. It brought back a lot of great memories from 20 years before, and many other visits before and since. Best of all, Greg and Jan were all giddy and grinning from ear to ear. We soaked in the moment and had a big group hug.

And then a group of families showed up to see the grotto with their kids. The parents had taken their kids out of school for a week to enjoy the Middle Fork in September. Good for them, I thought! One of these years, I might do the same thing.

A few more notes on the Idaho's best multi-day trip rivers to run in the fall:

• Main Salmon wilderness section - Float from Corn Creek to Carey Creek, about 80 miles. Six days is best at low flow. After chukar partridge season opens on Oct. 1, this section can be productive for fall bird hunting. We saw a lot of chukars on the Middle Fork. Pick up a launch permit on recreation.gov.
• Lower Salmon Gorge - Float from Hammer Creek to Hellar Bar or arrange for a jet boat ride from the Salmon River confluence to Pittsburg Landing. Most people do this trip in 4 or 5 days in the fall. More days equal more leisure time. Wait until steelhead season opens, and it's a great cast-and-blast trip. Great section for chukar hunting as well. Only self-issue permit needed, available at the launch site.
• Hells Canyon - Put in at Hells Canyon Dam and float to Pittsburg Landing, about 35 miles. The cast-and-blast trip in Hells Canyon used to be kind of a secret. Nowadays, it's very popular. I will be doing my 22nd annual trip this fall in Hells Canyon in mid-October. Only self-issue permit needed, available at the launch site. Watch out for poison ivy and rattlesnakes.
• South Fork Snake River - Put in at Palisades Dam or other points downstream and float to Heise. Fly fishing for large native cutthroat trout and brown trout on this river is quite tricky because it's fished so hard nearly every day by a string of outfitters and private boaters. Most people zip through the standard canyon run in a day. Take your time, start at Palisades, and enjoy camping along the way in large cottonwood groves. Do your research about the best flies to use. The fish are picky.

If you don't have your own river boat, there are numerous outfitters who offer trips on the rivers I've mentioned here. Go to www.ioga.org to look for an outfitter that suits your needs and budget. Outfitters will know what flies and lures work best for fishing, and they also offer bird-hunting trips. Look for hot deals!

Have fun!
- SS

Greg and Jan made a chicken casserole and blueberry cobbler at Shelf Camp on Day 2