Fall Trip

  First, I wanted to post this fish Jarron caught a few weeks before our big fall trip up in his home waters.   This fish was 26-27 inches long and was caught on a size 18 orange scud.

 This years fall trip started Friday night (10/18/13) for Todd and I.  We met in Lyman, WY where I ditched my car and hopped in the motor home for a luxury trip.  The next morning we went to the private section of the Ham's Fork.  The Hams was running way low and we had to cover a lot of water to find  good holes to fish.  The morning was tough and very cold with only one fish caught and a couple misses.  After lunch and some quality mingling time for the local cowboy, we headed back to some of the deeper holes to find more fish.  There was a good blue wing hatch coming off and I was able to get a few up top, but the wind and a long drive ahead ended up pushing us off the water.

 Next we headed over into Utah and across the border into Idaho.  We got to our next destination in the dark, which made finding a camping spot a bit difficult.  After some sketchy 4 wheeling in the motor home we found a spot to call home for the next 2 days.
 

Todd in his "Pantoon" in the morning fog

On Monday Morning Ben and Jarron met up with us... well, Jarron got there sometime before lunch.   Ben hooked into a couple of fish with his trusty bead head double.

 This lake had its moments where it was good, but compared to last year we had to work a bit harder for the fish we caught...which ended up being the theme of this trip.  Overall we caught fish on smaller stuff again.  They seemed to like anything in it with peacock and pheasant tail.  Jarron did well Monday afternoon with the still water nymph.  I caught one of my nicer fish of the trip fishing real shallow water and had a small orange scud on.

Monday afternoon we all headed back towards WY to fish Guild.  Monday evening, after getting our gear and everything else "squared away", we all piled into Todd's motor home for the night.
Guild ended up being TOUGH for us.  The fish we did catch were not the normal broad shouldered fish we remembered.  Below is my nicest fish of the trip that I caught right next to the dam.  Todd caught the biggest fish of the day right before he had to take off.  We fished hard from sunrise to sunset.  That night Jarron and I rented out the cabin that ended up being infested with flies and spiders... I HATE SPIDERS!   

The next day, when Jarron woke up, (I don't think I ever slept) we had plans to fish Fontanelle, however another guy that we met at Guild told us to fish Viva Naughton.  We drove over to Viva Naughton and it did not look to promising.  We decided we would give it a chance before moving on to other water.  It wasn't very long before Jarron hooked into a nice fish.  The morning ended up being fairly productive for stout rainbows ranging from 16-22 inches.  We mainly caught them on the olive/org stillwater bug and egg sucking simi-seal leach in the same color scheme.

 Below is what I look like, not after 5 days of fishing, but after trying to sleep in a cabin loaded with spiders!

 In most of the lakes we fished, there were these small ducks/birds that like to dive under water to find food.  This guy was swimming with his buddy when he saw my flies I was stripping in pass under him.  He dove down and Blam hooked him right in the chest.  The funny thing is, this is the 2nd time this has happened to me.  The duck was safely landed and released.