Jones Hole

Saturday I ventured out to Jones Hole for my first fishing trip of the new year. I hiked down to the bridge, which is about 2 miles, and fished my way back up stream. (Above is 2 weeks after this post. I went back and caught more rainbows purely on wine colored san juan worms...and I tried just about every color.)
I was told that San Juan worms work well along with some type of midge dropper like a Zebra midge. I worked my way up the stream about 150 ft with no luck. In a stream like this, if you aren't catching fish then your usually not using the right stuff. I switched flies a few times with no luck and kept pressing on until I came to the first nice hole. I could see some nice fish down deep, so I threw on a black wooley bugger. Fish would follow it and occasionally nip at it, but there were no solid strikes. Next I tied on the streamer thats on my green river post, and as soon as it dropped down in the water, I had a fish on. After landing my first fish I casted back out into the deep hole and saw something big flash from the deep, and then my line took off. I fought this fish for a little bit and got him close enough to see that he was BIG, but as soon as he saw me he turned his head snapping my line, and taking with him my only streamer that I had on me! I cursed a bit and checked all of my fly boxes twice to see if I had any others on me, but I did not. After that I went back to San Juan worms, this time putting on a different colored one with some good success.

What worked: Matuka streamer, san juan worms in wine and purple colors, and I did catch a few on a black wooley bugger.

Overall I had a good time and caught a lot of nice rainbows. This is a fun small stream that always produces some big fish.

Winter Fishing

The boss man at work keeps suggesting that we use our PTO days if we want to, to save on FTE's. I asked him what an FTE was and he didn't know, but said it was a suggestion from our CFO. A couple of days ago I noticed that April, our PTA, did not have any patients to see on Thursday, so being nice, I let her see all of my patients so I could go fishing.

I got up to "The River" around noon and quickly found out that the entire parking lot was empty. I have had plenty of days with the river all to myself, but seldom is the parking lot empty.

I was planning on fishing midges up top, but as soon as I got down to the river I saw that the Browns were still on their spawning beds. The fishing was excellent for both browns and rainbows.

Flies used in order of productivity:
1. egg
2. orange san juan worm
3. red wd-40
4. black seal bugger.

Overall, I fished nearly 2 hrs and caught a plethora of fish. Most of the rainbows were smaller compared to the browns. The temp. was COLD, which is why I only lasted 2 hours. I nearly froze my finger tips off, and my guides kept icing up all day long.

Streamers on the Green

Nov 21, 2009- Today I ventured up to the Green to throw some streamers. The weather was supposed to be crappy, which it was, which means good streamer fishing on the Green. During the day I caught a few up on the surface with a midge pupa pattern. The fishing didn't really pick up until it started to snow around 3:00 pm. The FLY (aka Streamer)

This Brown, 21 inches, did NOT want his picture taken! I had my camera on a 10 second count, and every time the picture snapped the fish went flopping out of my hands. Above is the best I got after about 6 or 7 tries. Below is what happened with all the other tries.

Next time I'll try to smile more!

Fall Fishing

When the water starts to get cold, the fish will move up into the shallows, which makes the fall season an excellent time to catch monster trout. This is a tiger trout I caught on saturday (11/7/09). This tiger is about the average size for this lake. They get BIG, which is why this lake must stay a secret.

Tiger Trout about 22 inches. This fish took a Denny Rickards seal bugger fly that I tied up in all black with maroon hackle in size 10.

Up on the mountain there are 3 lakes right in a row. One evening, when the family was visiting Salt Lake, I went up to calder to catch some football sized rainbows. Tiffany took our good camera, so I was left with the back up which takes fuzzy pictures.

At this lake I was able to catch 3 nice sized rainbows that were all over 21 inches and a half dozen smaller ones. These fish are as fat as they are long. These guys would not take the normal assorment of wooly buggers. I ended up catching them on a matuka fly variation with a yellow and brown tail, yellow/orange body, with a wrap of orange/brown hackle behind the hook of the eye. The majority of them were caught within 20 ft of the shoreline.

Obesity is a good thing, if you are a fish.


On Halloween, Jace and I went for a quick trip to the Green. While I was fishing he took out his airsoft gun and asked if he could shoot at some birds. Not really paying attention, I told him sure. I heard him take a shot and say, " huh, I think I missed, but he's not flying away." I turned around and he was shooting at an offsprey about 30 feet away from him. I then told him, " Uh... I don't think you want to shoot at that bird."

The fishing was good! They were sipping midges all day, but still could not resist my brown foam ant (winner of the day). I had a couple of fish take a variety of midge patterns (griffith gnat being the highest producer followed by a double midge pattern). The rainbow above took my mole fly, which is a mayfly imitation.


This was a boys trip to greens lake, which is close to flamming gorge. This is a private lake that is stocked with brooke trout.

These guys were spawning and had bright orange bellies. There were a few other people fishing with bait but nobody was catching anything. I tied on my olive damsel fly with a burnt orange tail and couldn't keep them off my hook. The fish weren't very big, but they have beautiful colors.