July 8th 2009 - Weber River

I guess some days you just need to have your butt kicked to remember that fly fishing can be hard and the fish finicky. Today Jack and I pulled off the "Drive then Fly" day. Jack picked me up at 7am to hit the links and chase some golf balls around. Funny side note: while hitting a few on the range we got circled around by a bird. On the 3rd pass I realized this was an exotic bird. On the 4th pass it landed on my shoulder!! So I got a birdie before we hit the first hole!! Anyway, I went right up on my hand and I noticed it was banded. I'm guessing it was a cockatiel that flew out a window. Jack and I devised a cage from 2 range ball buckets and took it to the club house and called animal control. Here is a link to a picture of the bird. http://twitpic.com/9p02o Hope the bird found its way back home.

So after 9 holes we headed to Kamas for lunch at the Spring Chicken and then some fishing. So the fishing wasn't awesome this afternoon and we left the river around 6pm so we probably missed the evening hatch, but we put some in the net. Jack naturally had a mess of whitefish and he wouldn't say how many were foul hooked...... Anyway we both got a couple nice Browns so here are the pics. Can't say any one pattern really worked today but as a surprise Jack said he caught at least 3 on a rainbow glo-bug. No "hook in mouth" witnesses so we are taking his word for it. Still that is really late for eggs to work. My only thought was perhaps the Utah suckers are spawning? Don't really know.

July 4th on the Weber

Celebrating July 4th has meant fishing for the last few years. Why break a tradition that is working for you??

I met Bill at Creamery Lane. The water is still a little high considering it is July but we have had such a wet spring that there is still a bunch of snow in the mountains and lots of spring rain have filled the reservoirs to capacity. So we got to it and hit the first hole that will normally give a good kick to the day with a herd of Whitefish. After a few Whitefish I hooked into a good fish that was doing so much head-shaking I wasn't sure it was a Whitefish. As I got it into shallow water my first thought was rainbow, but after getting it to the net we realized that we had a Cutthroat. I have caught only a few Cutty's on the Weber over the years but I think this is the nicest one. It was a very healthy 18" Cutty - could have stopped right there for the day and been happy. Fish took a wine colored San Juan worm.
Naturally, he went right on back. Not sure if this is a spawner that ran up from Echo Res. or if this is fish is always in the river but either way it was a nice catch.

It never takes Bill long to get some fish of his own and the wine color San Juan worm kept working, along with a beaded sow bug pattern. Here are couple of trout that Bill and I brought to the net.

Bill and I fished until 11:30 or so and then we made our way back to the cars and off to the Spring Chicken Inn for lunch.

I ended up with 10 in the net and Bill was somewhere near 20 (if we count the foul hooked Whitefish....).

Best patterns today were no big surprises; Beaded Sow Bugs, San Juan worms, and grey scuds.