Silver Creek can be a complicated, cranky, and finicky place to fish. It’s moody. “It” of course refers to the brown and rainbow trout that seem to appear in great numbers then vanish at will. The brown drake hatch on the creek is known as much as an event, as it is a hatch.
Over the majority of its span it acts like a light switch, either on or its off. The drakes are as real as the people standing there, but like the fish they share company with, drakes appear and vanish like ghosts. The amazed anglers often become spectators as well as participants of the phenomena.
Through the span of a handful of minutes, one drake may flutter past, then five, then a few hundred, then ten and hundreds of thousands. Then when they choose, the clouds of bugs and boiling swarms of feeding fish dissipate like smoke into the twilight of clean Idaho air.. and they’re both gone.
