Small Streams, July 9th, 2022

Are you looking for a stock of brook trout to have a summertime fish fry? Here are a few streams that are good candidates for creeling enough to do so. Elk Creek at the east end of the USFS’s Buffalo River campground is a good location, and another in the same area is Tom’s Creek which enters Buffalo River just above it on the south side. Not far way to the east Little Warm River is another good place to try,and USFS’s Pole Bridge campground make a good base of operations for gearing up. Cottonwood Creek above Kilgore is another good candidate. It can be a bit brushy, but such places are the best for finding them. Beaver Creek above the Stoddard Creek and campground Interstate-15 Exit holds plenty of brookies, but the adjacent Union Pacific mainline is a considerable danger. Modoc Creek, brushy as ever, below Pauls Reservoir is another good place to try if you do not mind a bit of thrashing through thick willows.

For all these streams, simple flies are the ticket. The brookies in all these are aggressive enough to take any small wet or dry pattern (try such as renegades, bead head nymphs, peacock woolly worms) offered, so save those elaborate and time-consuming-to-tie patterns for the Henry’s Forks, Teton Rivers and South Forks of this world.