Hi all! New to this board, but have enjoyed watching the posts recently. I have a 16' jet and would like to float/fish from Salmon to North Fork. I'm not new to this river or to jet boating but have never been on this section. Any problem areas or things to watch for? Any thoughts would be appreciated. [fishon]
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Welcome to the board. Hopefully some of the steelhead fanatics will be able to answer your question.
Windriver
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I've done some of that section before, so I will tell you all that I know. If you put in at the bridge in salmon, it isn't to bad. There are some holes between this bridge and the lemhi that don't get fished much because of access. The lemhi hole is pretty good also if there are not too many people fishing it from the road side. There is a corner in the river just before the sewer hole that you want to watch pretty close. Going downstream you want to stay in the middle or to the left side of the river. The right side has a few boulders in it that are hard to see going downstream and when you do see them you have very little time to avoid them. The sewer hole is a good one if there are not many people fishing it also, but every time that I have been there, too many people are fishing it and that makes it hard to maneuver through it without feeling like an a#$ (anyway, that is how I feel)[:/]. After that you come to the cottonwood hole. this is a good hole because there never really is too many people there. Right after that, you have a pretty narrow run that goes into a hard 90 degree corner. Not hard if you have any experience with your boat. From there down to carmen creek bridge is great. Once in a while you will run into other drift boats and very seldom in my experience will you see another jet boat. Some nice holes down there and free sailing. There is one particular hole down there that bottlenecks the river against the hill where a slide of rocks has came down. This is an excellent hole with very few snags[fishin]. A couple more holes below that then you are at the carmen creek bridge. After that you can go on down for 3-4 miles until you come to a boat dock that is against the mountains. At this point I would turn back. There are a lot of BIG lava rocks in the river there and it is a little hairy manuvering through them going downstream. If you do go below that, be careful. The river gets really wide and shallow (10-12"). It doesn't sound bad until you high center on the big river rock laying on the bottom. That is as far down as I have gone since I high centered on these rocks and decided to turn around before I got into trouble[pirate]. My suggestion to you is to hit carmen creek bridge and go upstream. It is a lot easier to back off the throttle and avoid obstacles rather than go downstream and try to power your way around everything until you get to know where all the rocks and bad spots are. All in all a good and convenient float if you take the time to learn this river. Hopefully this will help. I also have a 16' alumacraft with an 85 hp merc and do wonderful on this stretch.
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