Finally Finishing the Utah Cutthroat Slam II...

Back in 2018, the Merrill boys and nephew-in-law Mike Dover fished together for a week pursuing the Utah Cutthroat Slam - catching the four Utah-native sub-species of cutthroat in their native waters. I (Rick) had completed the slam on a visit to Utah a few weeks previous, but fell short of completing a second slam with a miserable performance in trying to hook a Yellowstone cutthroat in the tiny creeks of the Raft River Mountains in NW Utah. (read about it here). Luckily, there is no time limit on completing the slam, so I could hope to complete the slam some time in the future.

Driving to Utah by myself for mom's 90th birthday party finally gave me the excuse to seek redemption. I left a day early after work and arrived to an isolated pullout at Onemile Creek well past midnight with the Milky Way bright overhead. After a few hours of restless sleep in the back of my RAV4, the sun rose through the haze of wildfire smoke. But was the red sky a portent of failure or redemption?

I tried the short section of Onemile below the road with no success, then walked in a ways to a section of Sawmill that appeared on the satellite images to be a little more open. There I quickly picked up a little Yellowstone cutthroat to complete my slam.

With the pressure off, I just enjoyed the rest of the morning. Much of the fishing was in "open" water like this, where you could stretch your rod out dangling the fly from a foot or so of line and hoping you could hook the fish with a little strip set.

Dip the fly on the dark water behind the branches to get the fish below

I was remarkably successful, finding five more in Sawmill, the largest a whopping 7 inches.

With time to spare, I made the short drive over to Johnson Creek to check out a different section than I fished with Melinda in 2018 on my successful first slam. I'm very glad I did, as I found another 8 or 9 bigger and more colorful cutts on the slightly larger, but still overgrown stream. 

Caught fish with the full repertoire of small, brushy stream techniques, including dangling, dipping, dragging, and bow and arrow, along with the occasional actual cast in the rare opening in the brush.

Spent five minutes trying to get a bow and arrow cast through some brush in front of this fish. Then another ten minutes trying to get it further up the pool where a bigger fish was holding, which I missed when it exploded on the fly when I finally got the fly where to where the fish could see it.

Redemption was reached. All in all a fun and fabulous morning. #everytripisanexcusetofish

Absolutely beautiful coloring on these fish