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.