Wet Wading the Weber River

After a long drought of not fishing I have finally got some fishing in.

On Saturday July 26th, 2008 I fished the Weber River near Wanship, Utah. I went with Jack at 5am to be on the river relatively early. We have been wanting to fish a certain stretch for a while and now with the Utah law changes it was going to be possible again. The fishing was overall excellent for a hot July day. Dog days of summer are slow to actually affect the river this year with higher than normal flows for July. The river was flowing a good 25% higher than I was expecting to see and the so the water was a little off color and quite cold. Great for the fish!!!

We got to an area we affectionately call "School Hole" and basically put up camp. This is huge hole that is a good 8-10 feet deep with a big run on top of the hole making this a great place for fish to hold and casually eat as food floats by. A lazy trout favorite for sure. This also has some big boulders in the bottom of it making it easy to snag up, but the big challenge is the back eddies. This give the fish easy holding water and makes detecting strikes pretty hard sometimes.

We started off fishing Prince nymphs (12-14) and Pheasant tails (14-16) and "Whitefish Jack" starting hooking up immediately. Of course Jack can catch Whitefish in a puddle on the interstate so this is no big surprise. I took a little longer to finally hook up, and after changing my dropper to a green larva lace caddis I finally caught a whitefish. We did some river screening and found green lace worms and lots of sow bugs. Classic Weber river fodder.

I broke off on a big snag and re-rigged with a grey sow bug and caddis dropper and that started catching me fish. By lunch I had 11 in the net with another 10 hookups that didn't play out. Jack had something like 18 (17 Whitefish - including one that when netted appeared to be lassoed because the leader was wrapped around the fish but no hooks to be pulled).

After lunch we fished until about 6pm. We decided to wet wade the afternoon and the river was pretty cold but felt really good at the same time. When time came to start working our way back to the cars I had 17 in the net with at least 15 hookups that I just couldn't keep on. I caught 1 Rainbow and 3 Browns and the rest were Whities. Jack had 32 by his count but sometimes I think Jack counts them before they are in the net....... (love you Jack)

The best patterns were Provo Sows, Jack's Red Headed Step Child, Green lace worm caddis, and prince nymphs. We didn't see much bug activity but a few PMDs were around and of course we had little midges around too. Not alot of dry fly activity but there were tons of hoppers along the trail so those days are not far away.

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Friday August 1st I met Phat Matt and Jack again at Wanship for some afternoon wet wading. We fished our way up to School Hole again and had a great time fishing with Phat Matt again.

By the time we headed off the river for dinner at the Spring Chicken Inn, I had 7 in the net. One Rainbow, 3 Browns and 3 Whities. I had one big male brown with a HUGE head and jaw that was pushing 20 inches. We had a photo lined up but fish dropped and disappeared before we could get the photo. Matt caught 3 (2 whities / 1 brown) but the brown he caught took him for quite a ride down river and Matt was all smiles about it. Jack caught 9 - ALL WHITIES - and we that is why he is known as the Whitefish Whisperer.

Those 2 big browns made this a great couple of hours. Again it was Beaded sows, Provo Sows and Prince Nymphs.