Return to Currant Creek

Thursday was my day to fish with my nephew-in-law, Mike Dover and his son Ethan, who has recently decided that fly-fishing is a pretty cool thing to do. We headed to Currant Creek below the reservoir where a few years ago we found some outstanding browns. We left early and arrived before the sun was above the hills, parking near where we had fished a few years ago. Heading to the stream, we found - dam! No, not a curse word (although it became one that morning). Currant Creek is noted for having many beaver dams, and sure enough, busy beavers had converted the running section we fished a few years ago into a series of beaver dams. We spent a couple hours thrashing through willow thickets and deep mud, but found no willing fish. The only fish I saw was a monster that followed my fly at a distance in a deeper section of one of the dams. Regrouping, we decided to head up to a section known as the narrows, where the creek tumbles through a brief narrow canyon.

I headed down to fish a beautiful looking run downstream while Mike headed for a beaver dam where a nice fish had just risen. While I was downstream, Mike found a couple on an elk-hair caddis.

I think this was the fish from the beaver pond

Downstream, I had no luck on the dry hopper or dropper despite the lovely looking run. There had to be a fish there! Tried a couple other flies with no luck. Then I turned over a rock and saw a bunch of very small, gray larvae. Which got me thinking (that's a change!). This was a tailwater, and past experience from the Provo River below Deer Creek was that a very small midge larva was often the ticket. So I put on a size 12 psycho caddis (I also found bright green caddis larva) with a size 20 gray midge as a trailer. First cast was rewarded with a nice sized flash and a takedown of the indicator, but the set came up empty. That often happens seems to happen with a size 20 fly. After spoiling the lower section of the run unhooking the fly from some branches, I quickly found another fish in the upper half of the run, on the size 20. Things were beginning to look up.

Mike was still working the beaver dam, Ethan was sidelined as the water was just a little too cold for him wet wading (he has a little less natural insulation than Mike or I do). I moved upstream to find some moving water. Passing a shallow riffle, I found a short deeper run by a grassy bank. First cast, a couple flashes, takedown, miss. Second cast, a flash, another miss. Third cast, takedown, solid set and a nice brown to hand, on the size 20.

Moving to the right hand branch of the stream split, I flipped the flies into a nice pool and immediately had another small brown, on the size 20. I called Mike up, and we rigged both their rods with similar flies from my box of midges I bought for my visit to the Provo several years ago when my daughter was married (read about it here). I directed Mike to have Ethan, who had been having a tough day (ice cold water, bushwacking through fishless beaver dams), toss the fly into the nice hole where I had just pulled out the small brown. Ethan did as directed, and immediately hooked and landed a much nicer brown. Yup, size 20 gray midge was definitely the fly of the day. We continued to fish up, finding enough fish to keep us happy. Ethan found the biggest fish of the day in a small run below a beaver dam.

The big fish of the day; he could have made it look huge with a proper long-arm...

I followed him and found another, smaller brown in the same run. I told Ethan it was rather rude to take the biggest fish and leave the smaller one for me, especially since he was using my fly and I had left the bigger one for him down below. He just grinned more thinking about his big fish.

Action stills

I found quite a few more smaller browns, a couple on the psycho, but pretty much all on the size 20 gray midge. A great day fishing with Mike and Ethan, started slow, but we were able to figure it out and come up with a couple nice fish for Ethan. And I know what fly I will have in my box the next time I visit Currant Creek...