Silver Creek is the spring creek that humbles everybody. It's a slow, glassy, weed-lined desert spring near Picabo, protected by the Nature Conservancy, holding big wild rainbows and browns that have seen every fly ever tied and will refuse yours with what feels like contempt. The trico and baetis hatches bring fish up in pods, and you'll watch a dozen noses working while your perfect drift goes ignored. It's flat-water, fine-tippet, on-your-knees fishing. Hemingway loved it. You'll either love it or it'll break you, and both are the right reaction.
Silver Creek rises from springs in the high desert near Picabo and runs as one of the most demanding spring creeks on earth — a slow, clear, weed-choked meander across a sage flat under the Pioneer Mountains, where the trout grow large on a relentless conveyor of insects and learn, very quickly, exactly what a real mayfly looks like. Hemingway fished here, and the water hasn't gotten any easier since. The flow is constant and cold, drawn from the ground rather than the sky; the bed is silt and rooted weed, the surface a sheet of glass that telegraphs every clumsy cast. The character is meadow spring creek at its most refined — no riffles to hide your mistakes, no current to drag drag out of your drift. Wading is a delicate, often discouraged business on a soft bottom; mostly you stay out and cast long.
Wading: Soft silt bottom, glassy exposure
- Mixed
- Unconfined
- Pool riffle
- Meandering