Owyhee River @ Birch Creek

Me, my dad, and my bro drove over to Boise and picked up my buddy, then headed out to birch creek on the owyhee for some bass and cats. Brought the yaks with us to do some floats. We knew the water was a little higher than we like (600-650cfs @ Rome, we prefer it closer to 200cfs), and the weather forecast looked wet for saturday, but we gave it a go anyways. The river was definitely higher than ideal, but still fishable. Weather was nice fri evening when we arrived, and we caught a bunch of bass, a few nice cats off spinners and jigs. My largest of the week came on my 4# ul set up and a 1/4 oz panther. Right at 8#. It broke off at the bank, I jumped off my rock, grabbed the end of my broken off line, pulled the hook out by accident, then had to noodle him to  land him. It was quite entertaining to my buddies 🙄. We only banked fish fri evening, as the wind came up quickly after arriving. Satuday brought the anticipated rain. We did some hiking when weather allowed, and i did a quick paddle around for some fish, but mostly we stayed under the canopies catfishing trying to stay dry. We caught a few decent cats, pops got a 10# and a 12# according to a scale we brought. Then a few 4-7#, and lots of little 12-16" channel cats. Quite a few barley sodas were drunk, a roaring fire going, so was actually a pretty sweet day despite the weather.
Sunday morning started out gorgeous, so we broke camp early and headed off towards 3 forks for a couple of days.we hard plans to go float downstream for the day and access the canyon, where lots of monster redband rainbows reside. Then sit in the hotsprngs. Theres an 8 mile section of the road that gets bad after rain, but driving over it looked like it wasnt going to be to bad, judging from the other roads. We were wrong. It was  mud soup! Anyone whose seen what owyhee clay does when water is added knows what I'm talking about. We fought our way down to the water, only to find the river much to high to really fish effectively,   and the weather started to look ominous, even though it only had a 10% chance of rain. So, not wanting to risk the road getting worse, we bailed back to birch. Good call, as it rained hard sunday night and all day Monday. We never would have made it out.
Monday, we did two long hikes, one downstream from the birch take out, and one upstream of the BLM cabin. Fishing was great, considering conditions and weather. Not great compared to usual years, but good all things considered. (I've had one of my 3 1000-fish days on the owyhee before, by comparsion.) We got up and bailed early tues. No fishing done. So the best weather day, sunday, we spent mostly in the truck, wasted day. Heres my totals for the weekend:
Smallmouth - 169
Largemouth - 1
Channel cats - 10.
Others had similar results. My brother caught 4 largemouth, 1 was a nice 3#. My buddy caught 4 or 5 rainbows and a couple of crappies. my dad also caught 1 crappie. So, mostly a bank fishing weekend, with just a little yakking mixed in. Thought I'd share, as few people know much about this river system and the opportunities that exist. Heres a few pics:

There is awesome scenery and great whitewater on the upper sections of the Owyhee drainage.  I've done two 8-day whitewater kayak trips from Duck Valley to Rome, and a 6 day trip from YP Ranch on the South Fork to Rome.  But I had no idea there might be good fishing on the Owyhee. But two of those trips were at 2,000 cfs to 5,000 cfs at Rome, which are not ideal levels for fishing. You need about 2,000 cfs at Rome for the section of the East Fork below Duck Valley to be floatable.

Thats alot of catching - great report!

I love Birch Creek! When I first started with BLM I worked for the Vale District. I had to go out and install the irrigation pump into the river once. I love the views when you drop into the canyon.