I have been meaning to post about my recent fishing trip through Utah but since I don’t foresee me having the time to write the post anytime soon, I thought I would at least post a little fish porn from the trip. Fished 3 days, 2 of the days were spent on different sections of the middle Prove, and a couple hours on the Sevier in Central Utah. Never saw another fisherman the entire trip, that could be because the temperatures were anywhere from 9 (yea, you read that right) to 30 degrees. I have often had my guides freeze up while fishing but this was the first trip I had to repeatedly thaw out my reel. It was well worth having the river to myself.
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For Christmas this year my parents tracked down this old picture of a wonderful childhood memory that had previously been lost.
I caught this King on the second cast of my first fishing trip in Alaska when I was 15 years old. Although there were many other fish caught on this surreal trip to Alaska, none held a candle to this one. It’s nice to finally have the picture to validate the many stories I have told of this river running giant.
Spent Christmas week with the family, creek side in Oak Creek Canyon. We stayed for the week and I especially enjoyed not having any cell reception, TV’s, or internet. It’s often hard to get into the Christmas spirit in 70 degree weather and shorts, so it was nice to sit back and enjoy the cold weather with plenty of wood to burn in the fire place while 6″ of snow fell. I did not get a lot of fishing in however I did manage to sneak out for a few hours and land a few fish in while we were there.
Here is a picture I took while fishing the morning after the storm. The cabin we stayed in is on the left.
Thought this was pretty funny. Don’t think this guy uses proper catch and release technique.
Click Here. (you may have to click it twice)
Fishing Dog
It’s a rare day that I can take off in the middle of the week for a fishing trip. This past week Steve, a Fly Fishing bud invited me to hit the stream mid week. Given the amount of grief I have dished out to him over the past several months when he bails because of his busy schedule I figured it would be hypocritical of me to turn him down, at least that’s how I rationalized the trip it in my own mind. So mid week we were on our way to the beautiful Oak Creek.
With Fall colors setting in along with the crispness in the air it was a great day to be on the creek. We could see from the road that the water was running well, I found my self anticipating the first cast. The day started out a little slow. One brown, who was hiding under one of the many large Oak Creek boulders hooked up right off the bat, and just as fast he spit the fly. Despite the early hookup things were slow for the first few hours. As the afternoon set in we both started to hook up more and more. By the end of the day we both had landed several beautiful fish and had a great time away from the office. I wish that was the end of the story, sadly, it’s not. An hour or two before dark I decided to tie on a new fly, I unzipped my bag, and one of my biggest fears played out. My main fly box with 500+ flies, mostly tied by myself, was gone. I’m not sure where over the previous two miles it was lost, but it was clear my box had fallen out of my bag when I failed to re-zip it properly. It’s one of those lessons learned the hard way. After Steve and I spent the last couple hours searching, we relinquished the search and considered it a sacrifice to the river gods.
Lessons Learned-
Put your contact information in all your fly box’s.
Consider fishing with smaller fly box’s (don’t put all your egg’s in one basket).
And most importantly always make sure your bag is zipped up.
After weeks of sitting at home agonizingly watching fall set in while temperatures dropped as I could only dream of Brown Trout the color of fall leaves, I finally had an opportunity to break the rod out and run for the hills. Between family vacations, Halloween, and work, I was beginning to worry that the hallowed fall fishing season was going to pass me by. That was until last week when I had a Friday that managed to stay open on my schedule. Quickly I attempt to round up someone willing to drop everything to chase frisky fall Browns with me but was reminded of how out of whack my friends priorities are… just teasing guys. Turns out it was a great chance to meet a new fly fishing pal, and me and my new bud Travis from www.azflyandtie.com where heading to the White Mountains to see how the rivers and streams were fishing. Over the two days we fished four three different rivers. The results seemed to be the same. Fishing was dead slow up till 3:00 pm when everything seemed to turn on. Despite the freezing nighttime temperatures we where still able to get a few fish to rise to a Stimulator while most were taking small nymphs. Most of the fish seemed to be on the small side although, as we where pretty far off the beaten path all were stream breed. We did manage to land a couple nice sized fall Browns and one good sized Apache. Suprisingly, although we spent most of our time fishing a fairly large river the two biggest fish of the trip (one landed and one lost at the net) were both caught in a small tributaty roughly 5 feet wide. All and all it’s hard to thing of a better way to spend a weekend. 
