The Wife Says I Fish TOO Much

After 2 months of several fishing trips and not a lot of big fish and sometimes no fish, I finally catch a break. Today we went to Tiger Lake and fished for 2 hours. I was able to land 4 fish: 3 Tigers and 1 nice Cutt. This cutt below took a black wooley bugger with a slow hand twist retrieve. This was my favorite fish of the day due to overall fatness, coloration and size (21 inches).

Below is a terrible picture of my largest fish of the day. This Tiger was a legit 24+ inch trout. All of the Tiger trout ate the still water nymph that I trailed from a black wooley bugger. I kept a steady slow hand twist retrieve all day since it was working.

First fish of the day just over 20".

Smallest fish of the day, just shy of 19".

Last night we went up to the Gorge at night to sleep over with the intentions of fishing up around that area the next morning. Jace, Zack and I slept in the back of the minivan and at 2:00 am I was awakened to snow falling of the trees and hitting our vehicle. I sat up and could not see anything since there was snow all over the windows. I opened the door to peek outside and saw a good 6 inches of snow and it showed no signs of stopping. SO, I climbed out of bed and started up the minivan and worked my way out to the highway. It was just after 4:00 am when we finally pulled up the driveway to our home.

Below is the sunset at Matt-Warner. Friday after work, Jay (U of U intern at work) and I went up with the drift boat to fish Calder. Well after being blown around for an hour and no fish caught we decided to head over to Matt Warner to fish from the bank. Jay fishes a copper blue fox spinner that destroys fish everywhere he goes. His spinner lived up to its name and he ended up catching around a dozen rainbows. I caught one fairly nice cuttbow off a black wooley bugger before giving up to watch Jay catch fish.

A few weeks ago Zack and I went up to fish the Gorge for some spawners. We did not see any off of the banks but ended up catching a few off of a copper colored egg sucking bugger. After fishing the Gorge, Zack wanted to keep fishing (at least I have one boy who loves to fish). We drove over to greens lake with no luck and then headed over to the moose ponds where we caught a few puny rainbows.

Zack fishing at Greens Lake.

April 16th was the death of my camera. This is the 4th camera that I have killed in 5 years. I took my brother and 2 of his friends down the Green and they caught a ton of fish using a brown trout rapala. We floated the river in about 3-4 hours since it was fairly high water. With a lot of time left over we headed to sheep creek bay on the Gorge to see if we could get into any rainbows. Well, they ended up catching 4-5 rainbows chucking power bait and so the curse began. After a full day of pictures, I put my camera on the rear bumper of the truck while I squared away a few things on the drift boat. Anyways, I forgot about my camera until we pulled into Vernal. As soon as I got home and my brother and his friends left, I jumped into my car in hopes to find my camera in the parking lot. Well, The parking lot was full of camera stealing thief's when we left and I assume somebody is enjoying my nice waterproof camera.

Spring Green Trip

On March 31st-April 1st Jarron, Alex and I took a two day trip on the Green. The weather was nice and warm; however the wind blew hard. It was pretty tough fishing that first day on the river but we did manage a few fish to the boat. All of the fish caught on Thursday were underneath using wolley buggers, zebra midges, and a black RS-2. The wind was so horrible by the time we got off the river that we wussed out on our "camping trip" and ended up staying the night at Flaming Gorge Resort. Friday morning the wind was not too bad so we set the drift boat out on the Gorge trying to target some big spawning rainbows. After about 20 mins of good weather and no fish caught the wind decided to pick up again HARD and blew us right off the lake. After that we drove down to little hole to try our luck on the river again. Jarron ended up doing well with a micro mayfly nymph without a bead head. Around 1:30 the wind died down a bit a finally a good blue wing hatch came off. With the hatch in full swing I did good with a mayfly cripple pattern and the mole fly. Below are a few of the fish caught during the trip.

Dove Creek Ranch

Yesterday Garrett and I decided to fish this private ranch called dove creek. They have a website that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago at www.trophytroutschool.com. This is a small pond that is stocked full of trophy rainbows and tiger trout. We fished for a few hours and hooked a few however we were only able to land one, which is the picture above. The rainbow above was caught on a pregnant scud, and we had bites on chironomids and various dries including an ant that Garrett threw out and I even had one eat my indicator while fishing chironomids. The water was not very deep this time of year and the fish were really spooky. There were definitely some pigs in this pond which made it very hard to call it quits. The good and bad part of this trip was that you could see just about every fish that you were casting to and they were all big fish. I am a sucker for sight fishing, which is probably why I will go back and give this pond another try.

Fall Fishing Trip

This past week Jarron and I went on a fishing trip that we have been planning for about 6 months. This trip was geared towards catching BIG fish and we fished hard every day from sunrise to sunset. We started this trip in Wyoming at a private ranch called "Guild Ranch", then we went to the Hams Fork in Wyoming, next we headed back to Utah to fish Calder, Tiger Lake, and Strawberry. My fishing trip ended on Thursday; however Jarron is fishing Sheep Creek lake today and headed back to Strawberry on Saturday.

Before I go on with my blog, I would do a huge injustice to "the man" Denny Rickards, if I did not mention his name. He is a fly fishing genius when it comes to fishing still waters and just about all of the fish caught in lakes were on his flies.

GUILD RANCH

If we could do our trip over again we would have fished Guild Ranch last. I would not say that our trip was ruined by fishing Guild first, but theses were the fatest fish I have ever seen in my life. The rest of the trip went like this, "how big is that fish?", "oh he's decent, only 20 inches or so, but not Guild big".

The fish above is probably the fattest fish that I have caught in my life. He was 23 inches long

and a true pig. The fish below is easily the nicest fish I have ever seen in my life. This one was a tiger trout and has a beautiful dorsal hump and hooked jaw. This fish below that Jarron caught is a true football!

Another nice fish with a hooked jaw!

This fish had the spot pattern on his eyes with lots of spots all over his body.

I caught and landed this duck, heck of a fight. I casted way above where this duck was; however he swam over my flies as I was stripping them in. I saw him look down at my flies and I guess he thought they were real bugs because he dove under to eat them and wham... duck on!

Hams Fork

On our way to the Hams just outside of Kemmerer we ran into a herd of sheep. Jarron was is the white car in front and was honking his horn at these sheep but they would not move out of his way.

This river was really good for us in the morning and we caught quite a few fish mainly using small nymphs under a grasshopper. I am not going to even try to tell you how big these fish were because it has been a long week with lots of big fish, so I don't remember. Some of the bigger fish were 20 to 21 inches long.

Calder

We drove straight to Calder from the Hams and got there about 9:30 tuesday night, set up our tent and finally got to eat dinner. When you fish hard all day you usually forget about eating. Calder almost always produces nice fish that fight hard. Jarron hooked into a monster fish that took him into some weeds and ended up busting his sage fly rod into two.

This fish below was foul hooked right into his eye.

Who wants to see my face anyways!

Tiger Lake

Thursday morning we got up and drove over to Tiger Lake. The fishing was tough here because apparently according to some guy with a fish finder the fish were sitting on the bottom about 20 ft down. I switched over to a full sinking line with a big heavy fly and picked up two fish back to back.

This Tiger was 23 inches long, but fairly skinny. I don't know if catching this fish was divine intervention or not, you look at the picture and tell me.

Nice little tiger with cool spot pattern.

Strawberry

Fishing at Tiger Lake was super slow so we cruised over to Strawberry where we caught a bunch of fish. Usually we catch a few nicer fish at strawberry that are around 22 inches or bigger however the fish seemed smaller and thin. Below are pics of my two biggest fish and Jarron caught some nicer ones just over 20 inches.