Tiger Hunt

Catching big Tiger Trout at almost 11,000 feet in elevation is downright groovy. The hour-long rock-hopping jeep-trail ride and subsequent hike isn't so groovy (hat's off to Jed for the ride) but it's an adventure.... queue video recap....




The rewards are big, colorful and pretty toothy.







Throw in a lot of nice cutts and smaller Tigers lashing out at dry flies and it makes for a pretty fun time....

Strawberry Cutthroats

Word on the street was some good cutts were popping up on a local stillwater to snack on dry flies. Ben is the stillwater ninja so we packed up early and headed to fish it.

Got on the water a o' dark thirty and got a few risers before the sun came up. Strawberry Reservoir isn't super well-known for it's dry fly action, but the fish are known to hit up top from time to time and today was our chance to hit it. Unfortunately for us, the inlet flows had changed and the bigger cutts decided to stay down more than come up -- so the big fish count wasn't as we'd hoped. The planter rainbows were easy to get on the dry though, so it wasn't a total loss.

A day on Strawberry without needing to throw leeches, wooley buggers and the normal stillwater fare is good no matter what. Fun day all the way...

Red-eyed Demons

The drive across the lake Saturday morning was colder than I figured. By the time we had driven to our fishing area, my forehead felt like it had 100 needles being driven into my brain at 50 MPH by the wind. I think it took a full 15 minutes after we started fishing before I stopped shivering. Luckily, I didn't have a lot of time to cry about it as the smallie hunt was on in full.

Fly box: Crawdads -- Check. Perch minnow imitations -- Check.

The first fish just about ripped the rod out of my hands. It was a demon fighting for it's dinner (crawdad pattern pictured above) and it didn't give up easily. It was one of the most fun fish I've ever caught. From the hit to the fight and the fish itself, it was memorable.

------> Come here you little devil....

---------> GOTCHA!!!

And the proud papa with his smallmouth bass:



It was, after all, the first smallmouth on the aptly named "Smallmouth" rod. Seeing that fish bend the 8 wt into a pretzel was downright scary.

And some final shots of other fish that great day...

The smell

I officially ended my trout hiatus the other night. Long overdue. Walking down to the stream, the first thing that hit me was the breeze -- a perfect mix of warm and cool ribbons of air carrying the smell of a trout stream in the summer. I think that's the pavlovian trigger that starts my mouth watering in anticipation of dry flies and wet wading. At the very least, it's a cool welcome back reminding me of the style of fishing I like most.

Summer small streams = minimalistic fishing. One or two boxes, one rod and a lanyard to carry what I don't want in my pockets. I'm a relatively recent wet wading convert so waders are taboo after spending last summer without them. There's just something about standing in the cold water like a nut-job mano-a-mano with the elements.

Starting off, it makes sense to throw the Grumpy Frumpy (hat tip to Cheech for the pattern and photo).



One thing about small streams is that trout find a way to work themselves into every nook and cranny big enough to hold them, provide them food and protect them from roaming herds of hyenas. The first such strip of water across the stream from my entry point holds promise. Two casts later, and a nice brown trout is wondering what happened to the Grumpy looking dinner he had planned and why he's being yanked out of his hidden abode. Next hole up a few boulders away, I find a couple more of his good friends including one with the nerve to swipe the fly. And on it continued...

Later, the caddis would swarm, the GF gets the boot to make room for some new caddis patterns screaming at me from the fly box direct from the testing department. Good times there too as the fish took kindly to what I floated by them. These flies earn a spot in my caddis box.

Finally, as the sun slithers down behind the canyon walls, I stood there and soaked it all in for a few minutes while the water carried on its whisperings to the trout. It's been a good evening. I headed back to the trail, my shorts were soaked and my wading socks were sloshing with water. I was short a few flies but I made a few new slimy friends that evening. The breeze is cooler now and it pushes me back to reality and my drive home. Times are good, my friends...times are good.

What's a trout again....???

It's been a while now since I've seen or let alone touched a trout (not to mention almost a full month since my last post -- ouch). Last trout contact was somewhere around the end of March or early April. That has to be a record for me. For the first time in a long time, I didn't hit any stillwater at ice-off. I didn't fish the Green during the Baetis hatch. Ouch again.



In the meantime, I've been chasing the bucketmouths and a few fiesty bluegill around. Pelican Lake on a 21 1/2 Foot Cobra Bass boat is the way to go. We hunted largemouth all day long and I took some time here and there to hook into a few nice bluegills too. I found that even small bass like to ambush fish close to their size (small 1/0 Bluegill imitation) (top picture).

Then after spending 15 hours on the water, we get attacked by a swarm of some sort of Trico hatch focused just on our boat and saw a cool sunset (props to the Cheechster for the sweet photos)

And a nice sunset....

And finally, a wicked awesome day on the Stans Berries throwing the Tiki Fly where the pigs were abundant and my arm was full-on sore at the end of the day. Thanks Cheech!

Utah Lake Bonefish

So I've been following a bunch of white bass around Utah Lake the past couple of days. Fishing has been pretty good and the white bass are willing to take my flies.

Anyway, I woke up early this morning and figured I might as well go harass some more of them since I didn't have to work. The water was calm and I got into a few little guys right off the bat. After that, it slowed down a bit and I switched to a different colored fly. After a few casts, as I was stripping in the fly and felt a solid stop in the line. I figured I was hung up on the bottom until the line started to peel off the reel and head to deeper water. I thought for sure it was a nasty carp, but kept up the battle anyway. After something like 10 minutes, I'm not making any headway on the sucker and figured I had corn-holed him. My arms are getting tired and finally the fish starts to give up. As I end up getting it closer to shore, I realize the fish is HUGE and it's not a carp. It's a catfish. My accurate catfish weight estimating skills put the fish at a solid 7 or 8 pounds easy. And as luck would have it, I beached him and readied the photo, only to have it flop back in the water and break the fly off. Adios catfish dinner!

I figured that was a one-time deal, but a few casts later, I hooked into a smaller catfish and lost him just as he was making it to shore. The same fly then drummed up two carp as well, so all-in-all I caught a bunch of big fish today. Mixed in with the white bass, it wasn't a bad day after all.

Viva, Utah Bonefish!

Bass Dry Fly Nirvana

We've all had those times when the stars aligned, the fish were hungry, bugs were active and there was something cosmic in the way it all came together -- sometimes in ways you didn't expect. For me, it's been an epic Baetis hatch on the Green River in June or a crazy PMD/Caddis hatch on the Owyhee or a weird emergence of some unknown bug on Matt Warner where the fishing steps up to an almost surreal level of fun. And the fact that it's something 100% totally unexpected and unplanned creates a whole new sense of excitement.

This time it took a lot of driving, braving a hurricane in Hurricane and listening to some helium-induced horrid whacked-out singers at the pizza joint -- but it was worth it.



The Southern Utah bass trip had started a little slow the first afternoon. The bass were deep and my fly rod wasn't getting the job done. So I switched to a baitcaster and landed a nice little bass on a whacky-rigged Senko. My first fish ever on a baitcaster. Pretty fun, actually.



Next day, we motor over to some weedy flats and start to see some bass hanging in the brush. They weren't super-agressive or hungry so when we came upon a nice school of bluegills, we switched over and started pounding them. Cheech was drop-shotting a mixture of flies and I was fishing Chironomids under an indicator. (If you ever wondered what Bluegill like to eat -- even when they're picky -- see my previous bluegill chironomid story). For better or worse, my new Bass fly rod got broken in with a plump bluegill and many of his friends for the next couple of hours.



Anyway, back to the story...

As the bluegill onslaught continued, we heard a big splash closer to shore. Cheech says it's a bass. I didn't think so. A few minutes later, it happens again. And again. This time, it's pretty obvious the splashes weren't coming from the annoying ducks. Moving in closer, we realize there were a lot of bass that had moved into the shallow reedy flats. "Cut off your fly right now", Cheech yells at me. As he handed me a huge nasty dry fly of some sort, I did as I was instructed. The fly now attached to the end of my tippet was a big foam dragon fly imitation. Time to match the hatch, sucka.

Sneaking the boat a little further into the reeds, we see a few deeper channels for the boat to snake along. The splashes become more and more frequent and the dragon flies more and more actively buzzing around trying to get it on with each other. I throw the big bug back into a shallow weedy area (weedless hook) and it lands a few inches from a bass. The fish slowly swims up to it, looks it over and gulps it down. Fish On! Not. Didn't hook him. Tried it again with the same result. The 3rd time he just swipes at it and swims off.

Next cast goes a little further to the next weed and reed clump. This time the bass didn't hesitate or look it over too closely. The take was savage and the fish fought like a demon all the way to the boat. This was fun!

(note: the fly in his mouth)

For the next two hours it continued like this with bass taking the ol' dragon fly dry. Absolutely amazing. Any time you would see a dragon fly or dragon fly pair buzzing over the water, you'd see a few bass stalking them. The flats were alive with activity and we were following them around and casting to them. I would cast Cheech's foam dragon fly, it would land and be attacked and devoured by a hungry bass. We even saw some 3 to 5 lb fish jumping out of the water to grab dragonfly couples in mid-air, effectively ruining their post-coital embrace. No wonder they liked this fly.

Finally, the wind came up and blew off the dragonflies and the only fly I had was missing a set of wings on it's side and it's weed guard was all bent out of shape after having been smashed by so many attacking fish. It didn't float well any more anyway. Out of respect, I retired it to my hat where it will cheer on future generations of bass snagging dragon fly imitations...