An Unexpected Trip Back to Utah, Time to Finish My Cutthroat Slam

I just returned from Utah a couple of weeks ago, short the Bear River cutthroat to finish my third Utah Cutthroat Slam. I know where to find them, but figured it might be next year before I made it back to finish it off...or not. My youngest daughter is moving from Provo, Utah, to San Francisco. They were going to rent a truck, but ended up selling most of their stuff which made it so we could fit it all in my RAV4 and their Crosstrek. So I volunteered to drive, Washington to Utah to California and back home, 34 hours total of driving. Sure, it's to help my daughter and son-in-law, but also - a chance to finish my slam. The Logan River is mostly on the way, it only adds two more hours of driving...

Up at 4:30 am for a 5:00 am start, I figured I could make it on the river between 3 and 4 pm. And so I did. Being a Saturday, there were fisherman at nearly every pull-out in the lower canyon. I decided to head to a small tributary, where a short section near the gravel road had been good to me in the past. I was on the water about 4 pm. I'd loaded a Turcks tarantula on the line last night, so I was ready to go a minute or two after stopping. It was just as I remembered it, a typical Utah creek, not too brushy in this section running below a sagebrush covered hill. First hole, two casts, two swirls/looks, two misses (or rejections). Encouraging, but they didn't seem to love the Turcks. I switched to a Morrish hopper with a psycho prince caddis green dropper, and in a pocket above the head of the first hole, my fly again disappeared. I lifted and up came a beautiful Bear River cutt on the dropper, in the range of 13 to 14 inches, but before I could get the net off my back it was off the hook. I wasn't that worried, certain now that there would be more. And there were. In the next hole up, I saw the flash, the dry went down, and I got my Bear River cutthroat in the net. Mission accomplished, slam complete!

A beautiful Bear River cutthroat to complete my slam

So with the slam complete after ten minutes on the water, I could head for my daughter's house in SLC...or I could keep fishing. Yup, good choice. I was driving 36 hours, over the next few days, I should at least fish an hour! I did, and was able to get about eight more fish to hand, also missing about that many.

Found a couple browns along with the cutts, about half on the dropper, half on the dry. So fun to watch the cutts rise slowly up from the bottom to take down the hopper!

I was committed to seeing my granddaughter before she went to bed, so I held myself to mostly an hour (OK, it was an hour and 15 minutes), but I did make it to SLC with plenty of time to see her. 

Wish I had more than a day to drive to San Francisco, or from San Francisco home. There's some thin blue lines running of small mountain ranges along the way that I'm sure are uniquely beautiful places in the otherwise barren landscape. And my investigating found some held trout, but they will have to wait for another day.

 

Sarah finds her Bear River cutthroat, Rick finds a...grayling?

The monsoon moisture moved on just in time for a Saturday hike with Sarah and Melinda in the Uintas off the Mirror Lake highway. We did a 5.5 mile loop that started at an elevation of about 10,000 feet and took us by more than a dozen lakes. Beautiful country, but this is a fishing, not a hiking blog. I did pull out the fly rod at one of the lakes that had brook trout. Had a number of strikes on a dry, but couldn't get the hook in one. That was just to pass time. The real target of the day was the Bear River cutthroat, which could be found, where else, in the headwaters of the Bear River!

We met Jessica's family for a picnic lunch when we returned to the trailhead, then headed north over the crest of the Uintas to drop into the upper reaches of the Bear River drainage where the highway parallels Hayden Creek. It was pretty busy with it being labor day weekend. Found a pullout and walked down to the stream. I didn't know what to expect with this stream. In some areas the satellite images showed the creek to be just beaver ponds spread out through brushy meadows. In the area we stopped, it was running through forest, a fairly small stream in an oversized, rocky riverbed (I'm sure it roars during runoff). Fish did not seem to be abundant, nor present in the shallower pockets. You had to find a deeper shot, and they were few and far between. And every 50 ft or so a dead pine tree had been felled across the creek. There's lots of beetle kill in the Uintas, and they might be dropping them across the creek to try to improve river structure for fish. It made walking and fishing a mess.

Sarah managed to catch a brookie, lost a couple that were likely cutthroat, but it was kind of slow and hard to get around, so we decided to try a different section where a little side creek came in and I had seen beaver ponds on the satellite images. On the bushwacking back to the car, Melinda cried out that something had stung her. Sure enough, a bumblebee somehow got into her pants and stung her below her cheek. When she dropped her overpants, there was the big bumble on the waistband. I brushed it away, then turned to Sarah who was comforting Mel and asked if she was going to cast into this little beaver pond we were near. Needless to say, Melinda did not feel very cared for, and my response will surely enter our family lore as further evidence of my excessive attachment to fishing.

But back to fishing. We drove upriver a little ways and parked at the Whiskey Creek trailhead where I took a quick walk to survey fishing potential. Found my way to a small beaver pond, saw a fish rise, and came back for Sarah and the rods (Mel didn't want to chance more bushwacking or another bee so she waited in the car). Casting into the small pond, Sarah promptly missed a fish, caught a brookie, and then continued with some catches and some misses. Only brooks came to hand, until finally, she pulled one up that was a little more silvery. I quickly got my net under it and sure enough, she got a small Bear River cutthroat. Third leg of her slam completed!

Size doesn't matter for the slam

Now it was finally my turn to try and complete the slam (I already had my Yellowstone cutthroat from the trip down). We mucked around in a mess of beaver trackways and muddy swampy brush to fish different arms of the pond, and another nice pond just upstream (more uphill, there really wasn't a discernable stream). It was fun catching brookies, but I was really looking for a cutt to complete the slam. Finally, a small, silvery fish found its way to my fly. I was certain I had my cutt, until I looked more closely at the fish in the net. It was definitely not a cutthroat, but not a brook trout either. It was trout-like, but not right. Some faint troutlike spots, pale parr marks, scales were larger and more prominent, mouth wasn't quite right - a trout, but not quite a trout. That's when I remembered there were some lakes in the Uintas with grayling. The identification was confirmed when we got back in cell service, and a search found that grayling were found in a lake in the Whiskey Creek drainage.

Rick's small grayling

I continued to search for a cutt before we had to leave, but all we found were more small brookies. Sadly, my slam will have to wait until my next trip to Utah, when I'll hit a familiar stream where catching a Bear River cutthroat is almost a certainty. My third slam will have to wait until then, but now I have a good reason to find my way back to the Utah streams...

A Few Minutes with Dover

Anytime I'm in Utah, it's a pleasure to fish with my nephew-in-law, Mike Dover, if we can make our schedules work out. In between moving my Mom into a new facility closer to my sister (and providentially closer to a couple of our favorite streams in the area) and getting together with siblings, I had a few hours free. A quick call to Dover, and he was more than willing, having just sent his oldest son and fishing partner off on a church mission for two years. Stay at home and cry, or go fishing and drown your sorrows along with a fly. Not a hard choice! We figured with the drive time there and back, we'd have about 60 minutes to fish, not enough, but better than not fishing!

He picked me up and we headed to a small creek that had been completely killed off a few years ago by a major fire that burned most of the watershed. I had read reports that Fish and Wildlife took the opportunity of the fish kill to try and restore the native Bonneville cutts into the stream. It had been about four years since the fire, so chances seemed good we'd find some fish. And that we did!

They were a little more picky than the cutts I had found in Clear Creek, often rising to look at the Turks but not taking it. I tied on a dropper and found enough action to keep me happy, some on the dry, some on the dropper. 

Mike switched to our normal go-to fly, the trusty renegade, and started hauling them in. The fish of the day had flashed on my dry but wouldn't come back. It was more than willing to take Mike's renegade. This 13-14 incher was probably from the first plant after the fire, an incredible fish from this little stream.

Well, we both had things to do, so after an hour of fishing we reached quitting time, then continued for about fifteen minutes through several "just one more holes". Luckily, we came to a long stretch of fast water and so were able to bring ourselves to leave this lovely stream. And I wasn't even late for the sibling dinner! I could have fished one more hole...

Cutts for Sarah

Southern Utah's very dry summer came to an abrupt end with the arrival of monsoonal moisture, just in time for my scheduled day be with Sarah to start her cutthroat slam. Two streams were on tap for today, the first a headwaters creek above Panguitch Lake that surveys showed had a good population of Bonneville cutthroat. Sarah met me at my hotel, and an hour later we pulled up to a high meadow with a beautiful little stream running through it. And we were met with the arrival of some solid, drenching rain, but Sarah wasn't about to let a little downpour interfere with her slam.

After a short hike down to the stream, we probed the waters of the small stream. After a few holes and no sign of fish, we were beginning to wonder if the surveys from a few years ago that found 200 Bonneville's per km were still accurate. Then Sarah found a nice fish, but it was a tiger.

A nice tiger trout to start us off

Soon thereafter, the cutts began to flow. After a few misses, she got her mojo back and completed the first leg of her slam with this pretty little Bonneville.

A beautiful Bonneville cutt

With the Bonneville in the books, we could have headed to our second stream three hours away in dryer country, but Sarah made me proud and wanted to keep fishing despite the downpour. We took turns and found quite a few more pretty cutts as we worked our way up the stream. Hard to leave such a pretty stream, even in the rain, but we needed to find Sarah a Colorado River cutthroat from a tiny stream that runs off Boulder Mountain. So we bade farewell to this great little stream and headed for the Fremont Valley. 

After three hours of driving we just made it out of the rain, and arrived at a creek that is little more than a ditch beside the forest service road. I have fond memories of a quick stop here with Jessica years ago on one of our many hiking trips through Southern Utah. I remember driving wildly on gravel roads to get to the stream before dark, pulling up and seeing the tiny stream and almost turning around and heading back to the hotel. Luckily, I thought better of it and decided to drop a fly in the stream, and Jessica and I caught about 30 cutts in 45 minutes. The stream looked just like it does in my memories, only running a bit higher from rains the previous days. 

Still fishing the Turks tarantula, it didn't take long for Sarah to connect with a beautiful Colorado River cutthroat to finish the second leg of her slam!

Sarah and her slam smile - halfway there

Shortly thereafter, I found a little cutt for my slam.

Once that was accomplished we began our normal turn taking, each of us finding a good number of fish despite the high water and abundant deadfall in the stream from streamside junipers burned in a fire some years past. These Colorado River cutthroat are really pretty, many with a bit of an orangish coloring and a very dark orange slash.

We even had a double at the end of the day when we came to a stretch of water that was a little more open.

Is it a brace of trout?

This little creek will remain in my dreams, a long drive from anywhere, but a solid spot to find a Colorado River cutthroat, or just someplace for a not so quick stop when you are on the way...
 

On the way...

It's always fun to break up a drive and find some fish on the way to somewhere. Today was one of those days. After dropping Mel and Taylor off following on day of fishing, I was headed to Southern Utah to fish with Sarah and try to get her started on her cutthroat slam. I was staying at a hotel near Bryce Canyon that night and meeting her in the morning, so I could arrive as late as I wanted. By my calculations, I could get to a little stream partway to hotel with about an hour of daylight left. My pre-trip reconnaissance found that four years ago the stream had been poisoned and rehabilitated to restore Bonneville cutthroat. It sounded promising, and it sure lived up to its promise.

I left the interstate and drove down into a pretty little canyon. Within a few miles there was a beautiful little stream beside the road, and I hadn't seen another vehicle. Found a pull out, and with the first toss of the Turks tarantula a beautiful Bonneville cutthroat was brought to hand.

One of many Bonneville cutthroat I found on the way...

The next hour was heavenly, with willing fish in every spot where you would expect one to be, aggressively attacking the fly. Had a couple dozen to hand in the hour I had to fish. Nothing giant, all about 9 to 11 inches, but every one beautiful and healthy. It amazes me the beauty you can find when you take the time to stop on the way...

First Time Fishing with my Newest Son-In-Law

Can you believe my youngest daughter has been married over a year and I hadn't taken my new son-in-law fishing yet? Another parental deficiency that was remedied on this trip to Utah. 

I met Melinda and Taylor in Provo, and after a stop at McD's for the #6 meal to ensure a successful day fishing, we headed up the canyons to a couple headwater streams in the Wasatch Mountains. I'd been there previously with the girls on one of our many Utah trips and had particularly fond memories of this tiny stream that meandered through an open, grassy valley, and was full of small and willing tiger and cutthroat trout. A great place for your first crack at flyfishing. 

One of my happy places

Mel showed Taylor the ropes while I figured out which fly was most liked by the fish today. Turks tarantula was the ticket that brought many small cutthroat and tiger trout to hand. With a little coaching (or despite the coaching?) Taylor got his first fish on the fly, a little tiger trout. 

Then we took turns for the next couple hours, laughing at all the fish we missed, getting some to hand, and just enjoying the beautiful scenery. I can't think of a more lovely way to spend a day!

We found more cutts than tigers this time

With Taylor and Mel moving to San Francisco next month, we might start having some posts with trout from the Sierra Nevada! We'll have to see...

First Fish with Kestrel

Upon arriving in Utah, the first order of business was to take my granddaughter fishing. She's not quite three years old, so we wanted someplace easy. Her dad works for someone who has a cabin up the Provo river area with a private pond on the property stocked with trout. Sounded like a good place to try. 

Beautiful drive up the canyons to the cabin, a short walk along the Provo River, and we arrived at a small pond with grassy banks...and huge fish! Trout 20" to well over 24" suspended, cruising, occasionally sipping something on the surface. Tossed out a hopper, in short order I watched one of the monster trout slowly rise, suck the fly in, then swim off as I set so hard I think 20 lb tippet would have broken. Yeah, a little overaggressive. Tied on a renegade, lots of looks, then another giant sucked it in. With a more measured set, he was hooked and I handed the rod to Kestrel. Having never fished before, I don't think she really understood what she was doing, but we helped her hold the rod and reel. Her mom got the net under the fish, and when I lifted the fish out of the net, Kestrel started screaming "No! No! No!" and hid behind her dad. So Jess kissed the fish and we returned it to the pond. 

Fat rainbow from a private pond

I was able to entice one more to the fly, and Jess missed one and broke one off, but Kestrel wanted nothing more to do with fishing. Next time we'll find someplace with small fish that won't terrify her.

Tied on lots of different flies, but could only entice a couple

On the walk back, I cast a hopper into the river, had a few 12-inch size lookers, then had a monster cutt slowly rise and take down the hopper. I got a solid set, but had a lot of line out and it swam right towards me faster than I could get the line in and it came unstuck. Dang! Wish I could have that one back, but there will always be another big one to find.