Camping-Memorial Weekend

I have been trying to get up to Flaming Gorge for over a month now to fish for the spawning rainbows. One of my patients goes up 3-4 times a week and always lets me know how good it was. Finally this last week, he told me that I better get up there with in a day or two because the fishing has started to slow down. I took the boys up wednesday after work and got a flat tire on the dirt road down to the lake. I decided that I would fish a bit anyways before driving home 50 miles on my donut spare tire. I had my patients secret fly which is basically a ginger bugger with no hackle. My very first cast I landed the fish below. It was frustrating after that because you could see over 5lb rainbows everywhere within the first 10-20 feet of shore but none of the fish were interested. Next year remind me to go in April!
This last weekend I decided to go to currant creek for a camping trip. My dad and brother met us up there for a quick friday/saturday trip. Saturday morning we went to the lake to let the kids chuck some bait. When we got to our favorite spot, there were about 15 "out of towners" with their buckets filled with trout. Jace ended up catching a few smaller cutts, and I caught some smaller browns below the dam in the river. On the way home we made a little detour to our secret tiger lake and ended up catching about 20 cutthroats that where piled up in the little inlet.

This lake is a brood lake for the native bonneville cutthroats. They had some bright red coloration to their bellies since they are spawning.

Jace with his cutthroat from currant creek.

Tigers

Today one of my old patients and I headed out to catch some big tiger trout. We fished all morning with no success, and then with the help of another fisherman we ran into, we figured out how to fish this lake. This lake is FULL of scuds and these tigers hang out on the bank and slurp theses scuds all day long. Fishing here was really fun because it is all sight fishing to big fish. The fly of the day was a tan scud with a orange bead in the body. Light olive scuds worked too but not like the other one.

The guy we ran into fishes this lake about every week and really had the fishing down to a science. He was the only person on this lake catching fish until he let me in on his secret and gave me a few flies! After that I caught about 6 nice tiger trout.

Bro's No Ho's Trip

This last Saturday Trent and Todd came up to visit for our yearly bro's no ho's fishing trip. This sacred fishing trip has become a long tradition for the brother-in-laws on the Carter side of the family, where we bro's go fishing and of course leave the... our beautiful wives home. This year Trent out fished everyone with his 6 hooked rapala that is now dubbed "old faithful".

Todd had a first class guided tour in the front of the drift boat and ended up catching half a dozen fish. Some of the flies that were productive on our trip where: the mole fly, different dry midge patterns, red wd-40, and a rainbow zonker. The majority of our fish where caught up top on dry flies. We never did see a real good may fly hatch but fish were sipping midges sporadically throughout the day.

I was the drift boat captain the whole trip and ran the rapids like a pro. Trent offered to row a few times to let me fish, but flash backs of being high centered on a rock the last trip Trent rowed kept popping into my head. Saturday was fairly windy which made it difficult to row and even harder to cast a fly line, but we all made it down alive and all caught some nice trout.

Calder

This afternoon I took the boys up to calder to check it out. I had just heard that the roads were good to get up there and I have been looking forward to spring fishing on calder all winter long. When we got up there the wind was blowing hard, so I rowed and let Jace man the fly rod. He kept getting bumps on his rod which I thought were snags and then his rod went straight down. I thought he had snaged the bottom until I saw the line take off. It took everything I had not to grap the rod from his hands to land the fish. He struggled to keep the rod upright and a few times I really thought my rod was going into the lake along with my son. Well, he ended up landing this fatty that was just shy of 23 inches! Not fair...It took me most of my life to catch a fish that big!
When I first saw this fish, I really had to hold back so the profanities would not slip out. I did not want to be a bad example for my 6 and 2 year old boys. I tried to get him to hold this fish, but the best I got was for him to stand next to me.

Zack screamed like a girl when we flopped this fish into our boat.

After landing this fish we pushed back out into the lake and about 3 mins later Jace was hooked into another fish. This one not as long but still fat. After that we were sick of fighting the wind so we took off. I did not fish at all this trip; however I felt super satisfied watching Jace land that pig!

Both of these fish were caught on what I call the "calder" fly. I was trailing it behind a pretty sweet rainbow zonker that I tied up.

Past Trips

Jarron just sent me some pictures of some of our past trips and a few of the fish he has caught, so I quess this post became more of a tribute to Jarron since I am only in one of the pictures.

The pics above and below are from a tiny creek that flows into deer creek resv. Rainbows are usually spring spawners; however in deer creek they have some bows that spawn in the fall. If you could ever feel dirty while fishing, this was considered one of those trips! Just imagine sitting in one hole on a small stream while catching big fish after big fish. We easily caught 50+ fish this trip and yes that is the stream behind Jarron!

The two pics below are of a rainbow that Jarron caught on Jones Hole. More big fish from small streams!

I had to put this pic in to prove that there really are fish in lake Lenore. This is the lake I went to fish up in Washington but got skunked because the spawn was over.

Green River

Today I went up to the Green for a couple of hours after I got done with all of my yard work. Above is a 19 inch rainbow that was setting up to spawn. She was big, fat, and fought real hard. This one took an egg pattern. Below is a 18 inch brown that was actually my first fish of the day. He took a tan zebra midge dropped off a cicada.

I caught quite a few fish within about 2 hours. Flies that worked this trip were: tan zebra, egg, red wd-40, and I even had one take a cicada. Most of the fish were not looking at the cicada, but one came out of nowhere and hit the cicada hard!

The two pics below is last Saturday. I recently have purchased a drift boat, and the wife wanted me to go down the river a few time before I took family down. I quess she does not trust my captain skills quite yet. I took two guys from my ward down the river, and I let them each take a turn rowing. Both of them hit pillow rocks, which are under water rocks that will sink you if you hit them right. Both times we got high centered and were flipped around backwards.

Me and the boat. My rowing skill were exceptional! Just call me the float boat captain.

Clay with his fish. The fishing was slow this day for everyone on the river. We each caught two. Flies that seemed to work were: olive scud, flash back pheasant tail, and black midge nymphs.

Washington Fishing Trip

Last week I ventured up to Washington to catch some big fish. Every year when I was in PT school, my friend would go home for spring break and come back with pics of big cutts from a lake in Washington. I told him that as soon as we graduated, I would plan a trip up there to catch some of those fish. The lake I went up to fish is called Lenore, and as luck would have it we did not catch anything from this lake. This lake is about 4 miles long, but very skinny, and every spring the cutthroats in this lake pod up on one end of the lake to spawn. Unfortunately, it warmed up quickly in Washington this year, so we were too late for the spawn. However, we did have a back up plan which did produce some nice fish.
After being skunked from Lake Lenore, we headed over to Lake Lenice. Above is the first fish I landed. This fish was just shy of 22 inches. He took my "calder fly" which was the best fly of the day, until I broke off later that afternoon and did not have any extras.

Jarron caught this one right before we went home on a olive damsel fly with a burnt orange tail.

Above is a typical fat rainbow from Lenice. Overall we caught a lot of big and fat rainbows, with the smallest being around 17 inches. We did the best with all white buggers, and denny rickard seal buggers in olive with the burnt orange tail, and of course the "calder fly".

Our second day of fishing, we headed over to Rocky Ford which is a spring creek close to Lake Lenore. This river is slow and shallow, almost like fishing a lake, and if full of PIGs that you can see everywhere.

Above is Jarrons brother Rory with a huge rainbow that took a black bugger with no hackle that was dead drifted. This fish was probably around 7-9 lbs and was 24 inches long.

Typical rocky ford rainbow.

At Rocky Ford we did fairly well until the wind picked up to about 40 mph gusts. We caught most of our fish on a tan zebra midge and also a yarn egg pattern that Jarron named the Rocky Ford egg. We also caught some on olive scuds and black buggers.

Our third and final day of fishing we headed over to Amber lake which is just outside of Spokane.

Fishing here started fairly slow for us. We did end up catching some nice fat rainbows that averaged 16-18 inches. Here we used blood worms and red chironomids. Then one guy told me that the fish were stacked up in front of the boat dock spawning because it was the only place in the lake that had sand. After that I tied on Jarron's Rocky Ford egg and did really well.