Green River

Now that the crowds are gone and the spawn is on, I have officially returned to fish The Green.

 Speaking of the Green, Charlie Card wrote a cool article about the green in the "This is Fly" magazine...Check it out!
http://www.thisisfly.com/issue44_7.html?startPage=124&

One or two years ago they introduced a new kind of rainbow to the Green that is a fall spawner.   These rainbows are nice and fat and remind me a lot of  what you would catch in a lake.  It was kind of fun to fish reds that had both browns and rainbows spawning on them.  Below are fish caught on 2 separate trips. All fish were caught on eggs and worms (wine and red), except the fish Jace caught were caught on a lure with 6 hooks hanging off of it.

11/16/13

 12/14/13

 Jace and I both hooked into fish at the same time...He ended up with an 18 inch brown and me with a 16 inch bow.

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.

IDAHO Fall Trip

This year for our annual fall fishing trip we headed back up towards Island Park, ID.  Jarron, Ben and I met up in Rigby where we stayed with Jarrons in-laws Sunday night.  That night Jarrons father-in-law cooked up an awesome venison dinner for us.  Monday morning we took off early to fish Sheridan Lake.  Every year since we fished Guild we have tried a new private lake, and Sheridan was suppose to be that awesome private lake.  We got to Sheridan around 8 and were fishing by 8:30 and started hooking in to a bunch of fish that ranged from 12 to 16 inches.  After fishing all morning and nothing to big we decided to fish the river on their property that was suppose to be good also.

 We got to the creek that was not very big and we were already a little skeptical since the lake had flopped.  One of the guys from Sheridan told us their were big fish in this creek well over 20 inches.  We got to the first hole and looked in the water and could not believe what we were seeing.  The hole was stacked with fish and a few nice ones too.  Later we headed towards another hole, which the guy told us their were 200 fish in this one hole.  Well, the pic below is the 200 fish hole, and from where Jarron is at to the top of the picture was stacked with fish, probably close to 200, I don't know.

 In the picture below you can see all of the fish stacked up, which is how it looked throughout this hole.  Although we did not catch any real pigs in the creek, it definitely made up for the lake.

After fishing the creek most of the afternoon we headed back to the lake to see if it would redeem itself.  Crusing around in the boat I could see a couple of nice fish and we even caught a few bigger fish, but not private lake sized fish.

That night we packed up and drove to Henrys Lake where we set up camp and planned on fishing the next couple of days.  Tuesday morning the weather was crappy, rainny, and worst of all windy!  We put out on the lake anyways, hoping to catch a huge hybrid rainbow and some nice cutts.  We did catch a few smaller cutts, but the fishing was tough and the water was murky with the visibility being about 1 foot.  After fighting the wind most of the day we decided to give up and grabbed a late lunch.  During lunch we looked at the weather report for the next day and decided to pack up and leave Henrys.  Ben had to be to work the next day so he headed straight home and Jarron and I went back to his in-laws for a nice bed to sleep in.  The next morning we got up and headed towards a lake I had been wanting to fish for awhile.

 After only one wrong turn we finally made it to our destination.  Fish were jumping all over the place so we started to throw our normal assortment of big buggers with no avail.  After seeing some midges come off the water we both switched up to smaller stuff, and one of us even used a bobber, or sorry and "indicator".  Finally we started to catch fish, but they were all around 12 inches.  I had begun to think that we were cursed on this trip and would not catch anything real nice.  In a last ditch effort we cruised towards the north end of the lake, and with one of my first casts up towards some reeds sticking out of the water, finally saw the water explode and felt a good tug on the end of my rod.  The rest of the morning and afternoon we hooked into nicer fish with the occasional bout of smaller fish mixed in.

 We stuck to smaller stuff all day mainly throwing callibaetis nymphs, prince nymphs, stillwater nymphs and even a halfback nymph.  We pumped some bellies and found some olive and orange scuds mixed in with midges.

 On several occasion we both hooked into fish at the same time.

 At one time we both caught fish that were nearly the exact same length

 In the afternoon there was a good hour where the fish turned it up a notch.  I hooked into a fish that nearly took me into my "backing" ha ha.  We had thought that I foul hooked him, but when I finally got him near the boat the fly was right in his mouth.  Then Jarron hooked into a fish that again we thought had to be fouled, but again was in the mouth.  We spent the next hour catching nice big fish that fought real hard.  Even the smaller big fish fought harder than they did before.  After the hour was up we caught nothing but small fish for just about the rest of the time, with an occasional lunker mixed in.

September Trips

Over Labor day weekend, the Carter family had their annual camping trip up by Flamming Gorge.

While we were up that way, we also did our annual "Bro's no Ho's" float down the Green. 

We dropped the drift boat off at the Dam and it started to rain hard.  By the time Trent and Todd got back from little hole the rain had stopped, but we had a good couple of inches of water we had to bail out of the boat.  Luckily it didn't rain again the entire trip until we pulled in to little hole.

 Trent chucked a brown trout rapala all day and caught a lot of fish.  One of his last fish was the nice fat rainbow in the picture below.

 Todd caught a couple of fish underneath using a black PT nymph.  His last fish of the day took him for a ride and was a nice healthy brown in the pic below.

 Jones Hole

 Saturday (9/22/12), my wife actually told me to go fish for the day!  Since I had some time to burn all by myself, I went to Jones Hole around lunch time and hit Calder in the evening.

 Finally a break at Jones!  My past couple of trips to Jones has been hard fishing with not very many fish.  This trip however, I had the creek to myself and the fishing was ridiculous.  I started with a brown ant that caught a few fish but started to sink, so I went to tie on something else.  I noticed I had very little tippet and left my extra tippet in the car.  So, I picked out a nice tan hopper and tied it straight on to my leader, which apparently worked out much better on a small creek with trees everywhere.  Once the Hopper was tied on, BAM, fish on all day long.

 I only hiked in about 1.5 miles and was surprised at home many browns I caught. 

CALDER

 After a good afternoon on Jones, I stopped off at Calders, put the boat in and rowed over towards the inlet.  Once I got to the inlet side of the lake, I noticed a fish  rising on occasion.  I tied on a olive/burnt org stillwater bug and trailed a black/peacock callibaetis nymph behind it.  My first cast was towards the area where he was rising.  As my fly was sinking just a bit, I felt my line take off.  I set the hook and this big old rainbow came flying out of the water 3 times.  When I finally got him close to the boat, he made one last run deep into the weeds right under me and "pop" there went my fly.  He took the nymph, so I tied another one on.

 My next 3 fish however took the stillwater bug.  Overall for the evening it was 60:40 with the stillwater bug winning.  My fishing luck carried over from Jones Hole and I had an awesome evening on calder boating a fish about every five minutes.

 Most of my fish where in the 16 to 18 inch range, but ALL were nice and fat.

 My biggest fish of the evening was a 21 incher

 As the sun was setting over the mountain, I heard an Elk bugle not to far from where I was at.  A few minutes later I heard a weird grunting noise.  I turned towards the noise, thinking it was the elk I had heard and was shocked to see a moose family.

 So, I rowed over a bit closer to get a better peak.  I watched them for about 15 mins, but soon all the fish jumping around me enticed me to cast again.  A couple more fish to the boat and I called it a night!

Calder

Today Zack, Tyson and I took a quick little trip up to Calder Resv.  We have been fishing quite a bit this year as a family, but I have been lazy to post on this blog.  You can see some of our other fishing trips on my family blog at tjwatkinsfamily.blogspot.com

 We fished for a couple of hours and only got 2 fish.  The lake was super mossy and pretty warm.  Both were caught on the olive/orange stillwater bug.  The fish below was a nice 18 incher but looks huge in the hands of a 5 year old.

 On our way home we saw a ton of deer

 and some tasty birds too!