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!
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| 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.
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