Fishing with the Merrill Boys: Utah Cutthroat Slam II

The start of a great week of fishing, as always, high in hope, full of excitement. Dover and Rob picked Tom and I up on the way through Salt Lake and we were off to the Raft River drainage in search of the Yellowstone cutthroat. Leaving the freeway at Snowville, we headed west into the land of ghost towns and almost ghost towns. This is about all that is left of Naf, Idaho.

Naf Dance Hall (photo by Jimmy Emerson from Flickr; we thought of stopping, but wanted to get fishing)

Our destination was George Creek, where we would hike about a mile down from the top of the mountain where the creek starts to where the water gets big enough for the trout to be found. But our path took us by Onemile/Sawmill Creek, where I had fished with Mel a few weeks before. Of course we couldn't drive by water with fish, and the thought was that maybe would could pick up our Yellowstone cutts quickly and have time to fish the Logan for Bear River cutts in the afternoon. So we piled out of the car and got geared up.

The gang at the start of a great week

Since I had the slam already, I guided the others to a couple places that I'd found fish my last trip. Dover was the first to score, finding this monster by dangling the fly by a grassy bank until the fish finally tired of the sight and came up and hit the fly.

Dover and his Yellowstone cutt; good thing there isn't a size requirement

Tom was next, doing some serious maneuvering to get his fly on the water, let alone hook the thing. I was there to put the net under it; it would have been very difficult for him to thread the rod and the fish back out to where he could get hold of it.

Where's Waldo? This shows typical accessibility to Onemile Creek

It takes the Cutthroat Slam to get this excited about a tiny fish

We ran out of fishable sections of Onemile, and started up Sawmill. I joined the fray, hopscotching with Rob and dangling a fly anywhere there was enough water in this trickle of a stream. Rob finally found a willing fry, I mean trout. Now it was just me.

Rob Yellowstone cutt just came out of its egg sac

We continued up the creek, with me dipping and threading the fly through grass and branches anywhere it looked like there could be a fish. I had numerous chances, but came up short on all them. Since I already had the slam, we decided to head for Logan and some real fishing. But not willing to give up, I went back to Onemile while the others ate lunch. First hole, I missed a 6-inch fish that then held in the middle of the little pool and ignored everything else I tossed at it. Downstream a little, I threaded the rod through a tangle of branches, and with only three inches of line out, dipped the fly on a pool surrounded by brush. Three times the fish hit the fly, but with only three inches of line out and the rod in the middle of branches, it was impossible even to strip set, so my only chance was that the fish would hook itself. It didn't. I continued downstream, until at the barbed wire fence prominently marked with "No Trespassing," there was one last, little pool, just on the other side of the fence. With less than a foot of line out, I threaded the rod around branches and under the lowest wire, dropped the renegade on the water, and was rewarded with an immediate swirl. Unable to lift because of the wire, I did a minimal strip set and pulled the fish towards me. As I dragged it out of the water onto a mat of sticks (rod was still under the wire so I could only drag the fish), the hook came out of the nice, 8-inch cutthroat. It lay there for a second, but before I could react to drop the rod and dive for it, flopped back into the water, along with my chance for the second slam. I now have a reason to visit this out-of-the-way place again someday.

With the Yellowstone cutthroat in hand for all those who needed it, we headed for the upper Logan River, where we knew the Bear River cutthroat would be a slam dunk. We split up, Tom and I starting at a campground, Rob and Dover going a little further up to another section we have traditionally fished. They would pick us up a couple hours later. Tom and I started mid-campground, and it took Tom one cast to get his Bear River cutt.

Tom's first of many Bear River cutts from a perfect stream

I had one shortly thereafter, and we proceeded upstream, with hopper-dropper, catching fish after fish. We had more than a dozen before we reached the end of the small campground a couple tens of yards upstream. Lots of beautiful cutts. After a couple hundred yards and lots of fish, the water changed, dropping faster, and we did a lot of walking in big, slick boulders with few fish. As it neared the pickup time, the water flattened a bit, and we started getting into a bunch of fish again. We had about 60 or 70 between us in the two and a half hours, a stellar evening. We saw Rob up on the side of the highway, and I reluctantly climbed out; there is always one more cast to make. The stretch Rob and Dover fished was renegade water, and they found nearly as many fish, landing 50 or so between them.