Hyde Drift Boats

Peregine Fishing Lodge 2012

The Peregrine Fishing Lodge in Delta, BC was our latest fishing experience.

What a treat! We received first rate service we’ll never forget. The kings, silvers, and halibut were on. The pictures below tell the story. Enjoy the photos and check out our friends at The Peregrine Fishing Lodge.

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From the files of another great fishing trip. This time I had the privilege of fishing out of Terrace BC Canada. With a group of great anglers.

My wife, J.Ann and I met Brent and Dyanne Schlenker from Medicine Hat,  Canada and Dale Freschi from Prince George, Canada. In addition we had the privilege of fishing with a local Multey, Ken, and his son Mark from Medicine Hat as well. All are better then your average fisherman, so it made a great a week of  fishing.

We used one of the Hyde Power Drifters and a Hyde 16.8 for the first day to row a section of the Kitimat (which was great fishing). A motor is permitted to hang on the boat on the Kitimat, but it can not be started or used. We were almost continually hooked up on either a Pink salmon or a Chum salmon.

The pinks were average 4– 6 lbs and the chums ranged from 5– 12 lbs. We were a little early for the Silvers although we did see one group targeting silvers with some success.

The next day we went to the Skeena with the Power Drifter. The river was full of fish, mainly Sockeye and pinks, but we got into a fair amount of Steelhead and a few Silvers.
Dale Freschi (host of Sport Fishing on the Fly) has to be classified as the Bulldog of fishing. Dale caught the most and was hooked up, it seemed, almost all of the time. The rest of us came in somewhere after him for hookups for second place, third place etc… Dale is not just a good TV personality, but he’s also one of the best fly fisherman I have ever meet.

All in all this is one of the trips that I will remember for a long long time. Traveling to the Terrace area was a long one, but it was worth the 24 hours to get there from Idaho Falls. I would recommend that you find a guide to help get you into some of these great fishing waters. I am already planning another trip to the area and I can’t wait to hook up to some more of these monsters. I hope to see you on the rivers of the world and hope if you see me that you’ll take a minute to say hi. I will be returning to this area many times.

LaMoyne Hyde

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Just after Thanksgiving I had the opportunity to go fishing with a long time friend, Scott Stienfelt. I also went with Mike Pollowaski fishing the Bighorn River in Montana to do  a show Mike was Hosting. I was excited to go back to the Bighorn as I had not fished it for a number of years. I arrived early and found that Scott and Mike were already to go. The weather was cold and nasty on the drive from Idaho Falls, Id that morning and I thought that the day was going to be a waste of time, but as fisherman go, I am no different so I was easily talked into going fishing in the 10 to 20 degree weather. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of fishing that we encountered that day. It usually takes a couple of days to finish a show of this magnitude but the fishing was so good that we had all of the footage in a matter of 5 hours.

I have heard for the last few years that the fishing had declined on the Bighorn so bad that fishing was very difficult to have a good day on the bighorn. Will I am here to tell you that if it was any better I hadn’t seen it that day. We started to fish about 10 am and was off the water by 4 pm. Within the first 15 minutes I had my first fish that was about 4 lbs. and so went the day.

The Bighorn Angler personal was great and knew right where the big ones were and were great to work with. They took extremely good care of us from the first we arrived in Fort Smith.

I look forward to my return again to a river that I have always considered to be one of the great rivers of the West.

I would encourage anyone looking for a place to go fishing soon that they look to the Bighorn as one of their considerations. Boats can be rented or bring your own and enjoy the great people in the Fort Smith area and if you see Scott or any of his staff at the Bighorn Angler tell the Hi for me and maybe if I am lucky I will see you there also.

I look forward to a great season of fishing in the West this year as we are having a great snow year and that means great floating.

I look to see you on the great rivers of the World

LaMoyne

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I just returned from a fishing trip to the Bighorn in Montana. I heard that Bighorn fishing slowed down and that it was not like it used to be few years earlier. Well, I am here to tell you if the fishing is down I didn’t see it. I pulled into Fort Smith and meet an old friend of mine Scott Stienfelt who is the owner of the Bighorn Fly Shop. We also meet  a film crew and the host of the new flyfishing show on Outdoor Network, Mike Pollawski. Mike is a great host and a very good fisherman.

Shortly after arriving we headed for the river to find the surprise of my life. The first fish of the day was a 4-5 lb rainbow, followed by 3-4 small browns and a few rainbows. The next hole we went to produced several large browns in the 3-4 lb range. This was the way the day went. All in all we were on the river for about 5-6 hours and we had a show. This was the shortest amount of time I have ever spent to complete a show acquiring all the footage needed to produce a good quality TV show. We planed to fish the following day but having acquiring all the shots needed I decided to head for home the next morning as it was a 6 hour drive and a storm was setting in.

I was really excited to see the Bighorn River in such great shape and to have the fishing so good again, if it ever really was as bad as the press reported it to be.

I look forward to returning soon.

LaMoyne

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This week I went to the Rogue River in Oregon and meet up with a great friend Steve Bonner.  Steve had invited me to come and fish with him for some time but unfortunately the occasion never presented it’s self.

I finally got the occasion and was excited to be able to fish the steelhead in the Rogue and have such an accomplished fisherman as Steve to help me with some pointers of how to catch the elusive steelhead of the Rogue. I tried to use some of the techniques that I used on other rivers and failed to hookup as I thought I should so I humbly went to Steve with hat in hand to get some advice. He is a great teacher and was gracious enough to share his knowledge. That put things in motion. Jim Peterson, who runs our flyshop in Idaho really started to catch fish and the fun began. Both of us caught several steelhead which is not an easy thing to do on any river.

The Rogue is a beautiful river and is a must river to fish if your desires are to catch the one fish that always is the master of challenges to fish for. Give Steve a call and he will save you a lot of time keeping you from doing things wrong and getting to the catching quicker.

LaMoyne

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Just a short mention of a great experience of going to the finals of the Fly fishing Master. I was invited to the final awards of the Fly fishing Masters program put on by Barrett Productions of Missoula Montana. What a class act this company is and the way they protect the integrity of the sport of fly fishing in their shows. I have been involved with them in several of their shows and know they are wanting to promote the fly fishing sport along with protecting the environmental issues that we all love.

I watched the friendships that was developed during the competitions, but most of all I think that competitions is probably not the right word as all of the participants did as much cheering for each other it didn’t look like any competition I had ever seen.

Hyde Drift Boats gave a boat away to the winner of the largest fish measured in the finals and everyone was as excited for him as if they had won the boat.

That is the way I have found fly fisherman to be they seem to be a cut above the average and I feel it a privilege to be numbered as one of them.

My compliments to John Barrett who has done as much for promoting the sport of fly fishing and a class act TV fly fishing programs as any person I know.

LaMoyne

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I am originally from southwestern Wyoming so I am quite familiar with Wyoming at least  I thought I was but I learned a will kept secret in my own home state.

I have traveled the west and have just plain missed one of the premium flyfishing rivers of the west. I grew up in Wyoming and have fished most of it one time or another, but I guess that my waypoints and radar has been set wrong. A quiet little river on the east side of Wyoming just south of Casper is a section of the Platte River I have not fished until the last week of May 2004.

My brother was the game warden in the area years ago and said that the river, he didn’t think was very good but I am here to tell you that it was great!!!!!!

I didn’t have much time to fish but my son Matt and I took some time to while in the area and decided to fish for a while and was we rewarded. We caught about 40 fish and the average was 2-4 lbs. and full of fight. We caught rainbow and cutbows mostly and one sucker. Most of the fish we caught was on size 20 emergers below a San Juan worm size 12.  Most of the fish were very healthy, some of course had recently spawn so they were a little skinny but most were just like footballs.

We were very will taken care and equipped by the Ugly Bug Flyshop who have shops in Casper and at Alcova just so of Casper. We meet Mark at the his flyshop and after a little persuasion consented to fish with us the for the day and know his stuff.  Mark was a lot of fun to fish with and knew the honey holes, which Matt and  I quickly took advantage of. I also caught a few on a Blue Winged Olive pattern. All in all it was a great experience and I have had a tough time keeping Matt from making too quick of a return, but I think I am loosing the battle as he already has a date for a return.

This area is on the old Oregon Trail that in its prime had over 70,000 people in covered wagons and handcarts traveled to west and west coast destinations. Some traveled to seek their fortune in the gold fields of California, others to the rich farm lands of Oregon and others seeking religious freedom traveled these trails to the Great Salt Lake. This was also an area with large deposits of petrified wood and it can be found laying on the ground throughout most of the Wyoming desert.

All in all what an interesting area to visit and I shall return.

I hope to see you on the great rivers of the world.

LaMoyne Hyde

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Many times I go to great lengths to find new water around the world and ignore the great fishing right in my own back door. I took my wife and a guide from our lodge and headed for the lower part of the Henrys Fork of the Snake River. This spring in Idaho has been much colder with a lot of wind. So I was forced to do much of the fishing under the surface. Not my favorite way to fish but I can do it. I look at nymph fishing only when  I have to. I know that most flyfisherman would like to fish dries so I am not much different. I am a lot like the statement that was made in movie of Quigley Down Under when Quigley at the end of the show was confronted by the villain. Quigley preferred to use his 45-90 rifle and the villain liked his 6 gun so he thought he had the upper hand with the hand guns, but soon found that Quigley knew how to use the 6 guns also. Anyway Quigley at the end of the show as the villain lay dieing Quigley said “I didn’t say I didn’t know how to use a 6 gun I just said I don’t especially like them.

We did however catch a few good fish and got the opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors.I really like to fish the Henrys Fork as it carves it’s way down through the huge lava rock formations. The Henrys is a river that has intrigued me for years. I started to fishing the Henrys Fork and the famed Box canyon in the late 60s and have been in love with it every since.

The Henrys begains in one of the largest, if not the largest caldera or volcano craters in the world. Scientists have found ashes from this caldera as far away as Nebraska and is part of the Yellowstone volcanic formation.

The Henrys Fork river is famous  for its great rainbow fishing and the lower part of the river once it drops off the caldera rim to the valley floor is populated by rainbows, browns and cutthroat trout.

This is a must visit fishery that will keep you coming back or at least haunting you to come back for the rest of your life after you fish it.

See you on the great rivers and water of the world!

LaMoyne

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One of my favorite trips is several trips I took with my two sons and my brothers to southeastern Alaska. We would load up a small 16’ aluminum on top of the pickup and put a small freezer in the back of the pickup to put the fish in we caught and away we would go. The trip would start in Idaho Falls and go through Calgary Canada then through Banff  Park then traveling west to Prince Rupert. At Prince Rupert we would hook up with the Alaska Marine Hwy boats and go north to the little town of Kake Alaska. There is not much there for accommodations so we would try to contact a school teacher and rent their home for a week. This was good for them to make a little money and was great for us. Southeast is one of the best halibut fisheries I know of in Alaska.  I learned how to fish the area from one of the local Indians of the area by chance.

One day we were fishing the area and noticed a boat drifting to open ocean so we fished toward the boat as we trolled for halibut out of curiosity as it seemed that the boat was drifting unusual to be fishing. As we approached the boat one of the locals was out fishing and his motor quit working. After attempting to fix it to no avail we pulled him about 10 miles to shore. He was one happy camper to get to shore because the way he was drifting the next stop was Japan and in a 14’ open boat the likelihood of him getting there alive was slim to none so you could only imagine how grateful he was to be safe on shore.

He told me that I could have anything he had to which I quickly responded that I sure would like to know how to catch some of those big halibut I had heard of being caught in the area. He told me to meet him in the morning bright and early and he would show me a place that he had found. He knew the area very will and showed me a couple of great holes that I have marked with my gps. These are the kind of holes you don’t take just anyone. We have kept the where abouts to ourselves but does it have big fish.

I have found that to catch big halibut you need to find a hole in the ocean floor that all the crabs and fish naturally fall in and the halibut just have to set there and get big and fat.

We always enjoyed watching the whales that came to the area to feed on the large schools of herring that is in the area and to watch the eagles feed on the herring also. The whales would bubble feed on the herring. This is done when several whales circle a school of herring and blow bubbles to keep the herring in a tight ball then all together they come up under the herring with there mouths open and fill up on the herring.

The eagles also feed on the herring and look like dive boomers when they come down to pick up the herring.

As you can tell the fishing was only part of the excitement of fishing Alaska. The first time I went fishing to Alaska the person that I went with told me that if I was only going to Alaska to fish I would miss the total Alaska experience. I thought at the time he was crazy, but found him to be totally correct. There is so many things to experience in Alaska!! What a great place to spend some time.

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