Our day in Island Park, Idaho began around 7AM as I attacked our laundry that had been piling up – I also took care of some much needed email replies to a number of people across the country.  Meanwhile Taylor was catching up on some much needed teenager sleep as he stayed sacked out until around 11AM.  Today was a planned late fishing start for us.  We met our guide Brad Miller of TroutHunter in Last Chance, Idaho at noon and set off to tackle the famous Henry’s Fork of the Snake River in the afternoon.

Brad’s style of nymphing was unique and effective.  We were fishing the “box” as it’s called which is a rather short stretch of river that is packed with fish.  You don’t want to drift through it quickly or you simply miss too many opportunities – and you’re done in an hour.  That’s where the uniqueness comes in.  Brad jumps out of the boat and literally walks the drift boat down the river giving us ample time to fish every nook and cranny as thoroughly as possible.  The first hour was really tough as we weren’t getting many hits, but it soon picked up and we were getting lots of strikes but missing just about everything too.   As the afternoon wore on I landed several really nice rainbows in the 15”-16” range – stocky guys that were awesome fighters – especially in the swift current.  Taylor had a rough day of it though.  He lost 5 really nice fish in a row in which he had each fish on for well over a minute.  He was irritated and Brad and I both felt bad, but those runs of luck do happen at times.  In the end we boated 15 fish and both lost about a dozen that we thought we had in the bank.

The toughest order of business for the day was the wind.  Gusts to 40 mph made casting really difficult.  However, we did have another day of sunshine – our 27^th state-in-a-row, so we can’t complain.

We got off the water around 6PM and charted our path for Jackson, Wyoming – only 100 miles away – one of our easiest drives of the journey.  Approaching Jackson from the west gave us an awesome view of the Tetons for nearly 2 hours.

We arrived at the Virginian Lodge RV Park around 8:30PM.

The final highlight of the day was the good fortune of meeting up (for the first time) with the previous owners of our Winnebago View who also live in Virginia (Bill & Dot Nosal).  They were vacationing in Yellowstone and Jackson Hole and just happened to be staying at the same RV park.  They had been tracking our whereabouts and contacted us a few days ago and inquired about the possibility of meeting up with us.  Although we had never met we had many things in common including a love for Virginia Tech football (their grandson is an offensive tackle for the Hokies).  We swapped stories for nearly 2 hours and parted new friends.

Tomorrow we fish Wyoming’s Snake River through the Tetons.