Paul Reservoir

Paul Reservoir

This one is easily driven to, but is off the beaten path.  Go north on Interstate-15 from the Snake River Plain past Spencer.  Just before you come to the Idaho-Montana border, turn off at the Humphrey exit. Go left under the Interstate, then right onto a gravel road. There isn’t much out here, just a ranch or two as the road makes a big arc just beneath a mountain range that marks the Idaho-Montana border, also the Continental Divide.  For a while you do not see any water, just high desert, and likely begin to wonder if this is another “wild goose chase.”  Then to your left a creek appears and you begin to cross small tributaries.  This is Modoc Creek, and it is loaded with brookies of which a nine-incher is a braggin’ fish.  Further on the road fords a few other tribs, then climbs a rise.  You have come a bit over twelve miles when Lo and Behold, that rise is a dam, and Paul Reservoir is behind it.  It owes its presence to the need for water in the arid valley below.  Stock need it, and without the stored water, not enough hay could be grown to support them. Look around at this gentle little reservoir in a hollow.  One side is sage brush covered slope, and the other is a pine forest hosting a few primitive campsites.  Here is a great place to take a physically challenged person or introduce a youngster to still water fishing.  From the dam launching flotation gear is easy, or one can simply fish from shore and nearby.

So what does this oval shaped reservoir, about a third of a mile long, host with respect to fish?  IDF&G keeps a good population of cutthroat trout within.  Some years the population is better than others.  The normal aquatic insect cycle  takes place here.  Midges can emerge throughout the season. Dragonflies begin theirs early followed by damselflies then callibaetis which go from mid to late summer.   Resident leaches and snails become easy protein for the hosted cutthroat.  What about those hosted cutts, you ask?  They are usually co-operative when one presents imitations of the previously mentioned food forms.   So a lightweight outfit such as a four-weight seems to nicely apply here.  So does a nine-foot leader of four or five X tippet.  A floating line or an intermediate line is sufficient.  However, I’ve never caught a cutt here over fifteen inches!   That’s contrary to what an old cowboy told me one day while I was having rare, but unusual luck fishing callibaetis emerger patterns near the dam.  He watched me for a  while from where he was tossing a bobber and night crawler, then approached. “Looks like you’re  really gittin’  into em, but them’s a bit small ( which was true!).”  “See that, there point up the reservoir?, he gestured. “Got me a nineteen-incher there a week ago.”   All this after no one I talked to had caught anything over fifteen inches!  So I knew what was going on; he wanted my location!  So just to frustrate him, I continued to present and catch fish.  He walked away to a spot a quite bit closer to me than where he began.  In any case not many folks fish here, and you cannot find a safer still water place for a youngster or a person with particular needs to fish.   Just be ready to eat a bit of dust along that gravel road when you leave or return to Interstate-15!