Well… I admit it: I routinely get turned on by the best fly fishing in the White Mountains region. Our designated broker Bob Pollock at Greer Land & Investments is a legendary fly fisherman in the Greer area with over 25 years of experience. Also, my wife Wendy Krueger has been guiding fly fishing in the Alpine and Greer area for the last 9 seasons. Between the two of them, they have covered as much of the water around us as anyone else…
I enjoy fly fishing tremendously, but I generally gravitate towards the Yellowstone, Gallatin, and Madison Rivers in Montana. I like dry fly fishing in big water with plenty of room for my backcast. Unfortunately, outside of Lees Ferry on the Colorado River, there are very few areas in Arizona that really excite me about fishing. Sure, I’m okay with spending the day on the Lower Black River, south of Wildcat Crossing, wet fly fishing for brown trout, but I’d rather have surface strikes and lots of them. When I feel the urge to catch a few hookjaw brown trout in a Moosehair Caddis, I head to the Upper West Fork of the Black River.
Directions: From Alpine, take US 191 (formerly US666) north of town 1 mile and turn onto Big Lake Road or Forest Road 249. Travel west approximately 16 miles past Sierra Blanca Ranch, then the Three Forks area to Forest Road 249E. Continue traveling west past the Indian Springs trailhead, around the back of Big Lake past South Cove, down a large hill to the Forest Road 116 junction. Turn left (west again) on Forest Road 116, you will drop into the drainage with an old cabin on your right, continue another 1/3 mile and there will be a Forest Service Ramada parking area. Directly south, 100 yards, is the Thompson Trail trailhead and the Upper West Fork of the Black River.
There is a culvert just up the road which is fine for a drop off the line but I like to go straight south on the trail. After 1/4 mile there will be a fish barrier to protect the Apache trout, you cannot fish in this area, go another 1/3 mile and there will be another fish barrier, you can start fishing below this area. Everyone likes to fish a little differently, my style is to walk as far back as I feel like that day, then start fishing upstream against the current.
I usually walk for 45 minutes on the trail, which is about 3 miles. The first 1.5 miles of the hike is pretty wooded along the river, there will be a small meadow that opens up, then the meadow opens up to a larger meadow. Continue south along Thompson Trail, which is actually an old railroad grade, about halfway through the big meadow the trail will drop down (likely the location of an old bridge). Walk through the depression and after a few hundred yards you will notice the trail veering off to the west, start hiking cross country directly across the meadow heading southeast. It will travel a bit downhill and slope towards the obvious bottom of the meadow.
There is a great place to camp and have a picnic where the meadow ends and this is where I usually ride my rod. If I travel alone, I carry a gun, an old Montana custom. I usually get so focused on the water that I can walk in and scare a bear or a cougar… (although I haven’t had any experiences with those critters in this area myself). If it has been raining a lot, especially during the monsoon, the pools are quite cloudy. These are good for some casts, but I’ve had much better luck casting directly upstream, usually around corners on my side of the creek, and blindly floating my dry fly along the river’s edge. I routinely catch good brown trout this way using a variety of flies, including jumpers. I usually fish the entire large and small paddock in about 2 hours and catch and release quite a few fish.
If you want to fish this area successfully, you have to be an early bird. I like to be in the water around 6 in the morning. This means I leave Alpine around 4:30am in the summer, drive for 45 minutes, and then walk for 45 minutes. I have tried fishing the area later in the morning and in the afternoon with limited success. I figure if your goal is to catch fish, you should be there when they are feeding.
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