First Fish with Kestrel

Upon arriving in Utah, the first order of business was to take my granddaughter fishing. She's not quite three years old, so we wanted someplace easy. Her dad works for someone who has a cabin up the Provo river area with a private pond on the property stocked with trout. Sounded like a good place to try. 

Beautiful drive up the canyons to the cabin, a short walk along the Provo River, and we arrived at a small pond with grassy banks...and huge fish! Trout 20" to well over 24" suspended, cruising, occasionally sipping something on the surface. Tossed out a hopper, in short order I watched one of the monster trout slowly rise, suck the fly in, then swim off as I set so hard I think 20 lb tippet would have broken. Yeah, a little overaggressive. Tied on a renegade, lots of looks, then another giant sucked it in. With a more measured set, he was hooked and I handed the rod to Kestrel. Having never fished before, I don't think she really understood what she was doing, but we helped her hold the rod and reel. Her mom got the net under the fish, and when I lifted the fish out of the net, Kestrel started screaming "No! No! No!" and hid behind her dad. So Jess kissed the fish and we returned it to the pond. 

Fat rainbow from a private pond

I was able to entice one more to the fly, and Jess missed one and broke one off, but Kestrel wanted nothing more to do with fishing. Next time we'll find someplace with small fish that won't terrify her.

Tied on lots of different flies, but could only entice a couple

On the walk back, I cast a hopper into the river, had a few 12-inch size lookers, then had a monster cutt slowly rise and take down the hopper. I got a solid set, but had a lot of line out and it swam right towards me faster than I could get the line in and it came unstuck. Dang! Wish I could have that one back, but there will always be another big one to find.

On the Way to Utah...

Headed to Utah to visit kids and take them fishing, move my Mom to a new place, get together with siblings. So with a newly minted annual Utah fishing license in hand (well, on my phone), I faced my first choice as I neared Snowville. Continue on the freeway and fight the Ogden/SLC rush hour traffic, or take a detour to a small creek west of Snowville and see if I could find a Yellowstone cutthroat to start my third Utah Cutthroat slam, then finish the drive when traffic had abated. Duh! Is that even a choice?

An hour and half of scenic backways and gravel roads later, I was at the side of a very small and extremely brushy creek, one of the few in Utah where Yellowstone cutthroat trout are in their native range. The epitome of small creek fishing. Mostly dipping the fly, a couple bow and arrows, lots of tangles in brush. Missed three and had two drop off the fly before I could get the net under them. Finally got one to into the net for a quick pic to start my slam.

Yellowstone cutts are so pretty

Definitely a remote area with tiny streams a normal person would probably never visit unless you needed to find a Yellowstone cutthroat for the Utah Cutthroat slam. Well, I've been back here five times now, not always for the slam. I'll own the fact that I'm probably not normal when it  comes to fishing...

Melinda Finally Visits the Creek

I realized that in all the years of fishing "The Creek", my youngest daughter Melinda had never been fishing there. When we'd head up to Wenatchee to visit family, the choice was always between playing with cousins (those her age weren't that interested in fishing) or going to the creek. Cousins always won out. Well, we finally remedied that parenting deficiency. 

Melinda was back for a week to visit home and had planned a day up to Wenatchee to do the Enchantments through-hike with a friend (19 miles and a ton of elevation in one day), so I drove up to bring her home the day after her hike. We make plans to stop at the creek on the way home (Rob came along) and were able to find a few fish. She quickly learned why it's such a great place and a horrible place to fish (lots of willing trout but overgrown with grass and brushy trees).

Note the fish is in the process of releasing itself!

Funniest thing of the day was when Mel made a cast, missed the fish and ended up with her fly in the tree branch above. Rob took over on the power play and immediately did the same thing. I had my chance with the double power play, but promptly missed the fish and ended up with my fly in the same tree. All three of us with our flies in the tree and the fish laughing in the stream!

Happy fishing!

Another Happy Birthday

Tom and I got together for our annual birthday trip, a couple weeks early to fit schedules. Not quite as epic as last year, but still a good trip. Some big ones, some small ones, and of course the ones that got away. Mostly nymphs early, but moved to hoppers by later in the afternoon. I took pictures of every fish we got to the net (missed a couple), I'll let them tell the story this time, except for the rattlesnake that Tom didn't see in the trail and full out stepped on it. Heard the rattling, saw it flailing under his boot, and jumped back... We do wear rattlesnake chaps, which were almost put to the test. Needless to say, we paid a little closer attention to the trail after that.

A Quick Fishing Fix

With limited time in the next month or two available for fishing, I decided to make a quick trip to my local stream on my Friday off for a quick fishing fix and early solstice celebration. On the stream by about 6 am. Found 48 in the first hole, 32 more in the rest of the 1/4-mile stretch of stream. On the smaller side compared to recent years, maybe 30 percent in the 9 to 10 inch ranges, the rest were smaller. Fished the double psycho under the indicator, size 12 top and 16 or 18 on bottom. Off the river before 10 am.

A nice 10-inch rainbow

The floods from last winter have scoured the riverbed and turned most of the stretch I normally fish into a broad, shallow channel with no holes or structure. The first hole is the only spot where a reasonably good run remains. That's what happens when you contain a stream to a small channel with dikes/levees to keep it from spreading out. But it will develop better structure in future years as it has in the past. And 70 fish to hand in a short morning is a pretty good day. Happy fishing!

First Outing of the Spring

Met a friend and his dad at a favorite springtime basin lake to see how many we could find. This lake is worth the short hike just for the scenery, the fact that you can enjoy the scenery while kicking around in a float tube and finding fish makes it all the better.

It was a calm, beautiful morning, and we had the lake to ourselves for the first couple hours, and just a couple shore anglers and a couple tubers after that. Starting from shore, I had three fish to hand in quick succession on Tom's chewy chironomid, then nothing more. It's hard to fish from shore, with brush having filled in the edge of the lake out to the depth where we used to catch the cruising fish in the spring. So I hopped in my tube and started kicking around the shoreline around to the point across from the launch. Trolling a green simi-leech on a somewhat sinking line, I had three more hits and one to hand. 

Beautiful rainbow from a beautiful lake

When I got by the point, the hits became more regular, but still kind of slow, so I switched back to the chironomids and put a size 16 psycho prince on the bottom. Fish started coming to hand more frequently, and I got dialed in on them at the 17-ft depth line (my $35 portable fish finder from China isn't much use for finding fish, but it is accurate at finding the depth). For the next hour I slowly kicked back and forth along the point at the 17-ft depth line and didn't go more than two minutes without a takedown, every one on the psycho. I brought a couple dozen to hand, all about 15 to 16-inches like the one above. My friend and his dad had remained along the cliffs on the other side finding some fish (including a 20-inch tiger trout), but came over to the point and found similar success with a size 16 micro-leech. The bite started slowing, and it was already past the time I told my wife I'd probably be home (a nearly 2-hr drive), so I left my friends to catch a few more. With the fishing done, I could look more closely at the tiny prairie stars, buttercups, and other wildflowers lining the trail as I made the steep climb back to the car. What a beautiful place to start this year's fishing adventures!

Hopper Birthday!

It's that time of year when Tom and I get together to find some trout to celebrate our one-day-apart birthdays at the beginning of August. Boy did we ever find the trout this year.

Twelve and a half hours fishing with no stops at our favorite Nunya Creek. The morning started a little slow with the hoppers and nymphs, as we often find it does. In one of the large pools there was a school of a dozen or more fish feeding on tiny emerging flies with no interest in bigger bites like the hopper. Fun to watch. A little later approaching 9 am, we came to a run Tom said never seems to produce fish any more. We promptly caught seven, Tom on the Moorish hopper, me on the October caddis jig head nymph. From then on, it was pretty consistent action all the way to quitting time 10 1/2 hours later.

Tom fished the hopper exclusively, I followed his hopper with my nymph when the water was big enough with a lot of success; otherwise, we took turns running our hoppers along the banks.

For the day we had in the range of 60 to hand, consistently fat, 13 to 19 inch rainbows and browns, with a few more than a dozen measured from 20 to 23 inches. Big, powerful fish in a small stream. Nothing like watching a 20-plus inch trout slowly approach your hopper, slurp it in, then explode out of the water as you set the hook. 

Or in Tom's case, disappear with your hopper as your tippet parts. It's hard to call it an off day when you get 30 fish including multiple 20-inch plus to hand, but for Tom, it was an off day or he would have had 40. He broke flies off in a half dozen fish pushing 20-plus inches, missed many more with nary a tug on the line (we temporarily renamed the 5 fish hole the 5 miss hole...). That's pretty normal for me, but for Tom, it looks like he's gotten a little rusty. Maybe he was missing the guides at Christmas Island who'd spot the bonefish and tell him when to set the hook...

We ended the day in the evening light finding big trout in the middle of long stretches of dead water, quite different from the normal hugging of the grassy bank to find fish. Long, upstream cast of the hopper, watch a big trout arch out of the water and drop on the fly, then fight it in while your brother tosses up to find the next one (we had a number of doubles). Throw in sighting of an otter, a porcupine in the tree right over our heads above the creek, and a female moose trotting up the hill away from the creek, and it was a pretty epic day. Definitely a hopper birthday!