Whitefish Jack and I had been trying to line up schedules for a few weeks and finally made it work. Jack has been logging WAY too many days on the river without me. I met Jack, his father Daryl, nephew Dominic and Bill on the Weber just after noon. We met at what we call "Creamery" since it is just off Creamery Lane in Hoytsville.
Jack and company had been fishing for around 90 minutes and already had some in the net. So Bill and I were anxious to get caught up and find a few trout of our own. We hit a really big hole that normally has good fish in it and for 30 minutes we came up empty. We changed patterns, added weight and basically beat the water pretty good with no results. It was starting to look bad when ol’ Whitefish Jack wandered down to us. He brought with him the magic Whitefish power that causes all Whitefish within a 500 yard radius to instantly start feeding.
Thank goodness he showed up and after the deserved mocking of our fishing skills, Jack proceeded to show us up. BIG TIME. While frustrating it never ceases to amaze me how Jack can just make fish strike. Within minutes we all had caught fish and jokes and smiles were back out. The ever popular phrase “Get out of my hole” was echoing across the river every time someone hooked up.
At one point I was waiting for Bill to pick up his line so I could “crowd” him a little and he had a great strike that sent a really nice trout back flipping out of the water. Too bad it came free. A while later in almost the same spot I nailed a really nice brown trout that made 3 spectacular leaps from the water to the joy of Jack and myself. It was about 10 minutes after Bill had walked back up river so I think this trout was waiting for him to leave.
All said and done it was a great day to be on the water. Temps were in the high 40s to low 50s depending on clouds and wind. We had some midges hatching but only saw a couple small fish slurping dries.
Jack ended up with something like 34 fish. I never got the tally but I’ll assume that 32 of them were Whitefish. Bill was near 10 and about half trout. I caught 7 and hooked up another 5-6 times. I caught 4 browns and 3 whites but that big brown that gave us a great tail-dance show and then fought hard was a great fish for the day. Flies for the day were Beaded Sows, Larva Lace Worm, Wine San Juan Worm, and Jack's Newly Created Unnamed Fly
Water was slightly off color, probably from snow melt, but the river was higher than expected. I noticed that the water managers have Echo Reservoir pretty darn full for late March. I haven’t seen Rockport Dam but hope to get back up here next week to see how full they are before the run-off gets raging. Probably another week before they flood the river out to fill up all the irrigation systems that pull water from the Weber. Can’t believe that irrigation season is just over 2 weeks away. Time to start watching the river flow reports and get excited for the rainbow spawn and spring fishing.
Jack - You are the ONLY person I know who could catch a Carp that big out of the Weber and be proud of it. What a freakin' pig fish.
-Scott
