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...